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THE WATER-BABIES. 



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THE 


W A T E R-B A B I E S 


jFairj) JTale for a lLattit=13ai)g. 


BY THE 

REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, 

AUTHOR OF “ TWO YEARS AGO,” “ AMYAS LEIGH,” ETC. 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. NOEL PATON, R. S. A. 





NEW YORK 


MACMILLAN AND CO. 


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Trow’s 

Printing and Bookbinding Company, 
205-213 /tasi x'ith St ., 

NEW YORK. 


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TO MY YOUNGEST SON, 


GRENVILLE ARTHUR 


AND TO 

ALL OTHER GOOD LITTLE BOYS. 


Come^ read me my riddle^ each good little man 
If you cannot read it, no grown-up folk can. 


L’ENVOI 


H ENCE, unbelieving Sadducecs, 
And less-believing Pharisees, 
With dull conventionalities ; 

A.nd leave a country muse at ease 
To play at leap-frog, if she please. 
With children and realities. 


THE WATER-BABIES:’ 

A FA1K.Y TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 


CHAPTER I, 


“ I HEARD a thousand blended notes. 

While in a grove I sate reclined ; 

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 

“ To her fair works did Nature link 

The human soul that through me ran ; 

And much it grieved my heart to think, 

What man has made of man.” 

Wordsworth. 


NCE upon a time there was a little 
chimney-sweep, and his name 
was Tom. That is a short name, 
and you have heard it before, so 
you will not have much trouble 
in remerribering it. He lived in 
a great town in the North country, where there were plen- 
ty of chimneys to sweep, and plenty of money for Tom 



8 


IVater ’Babies : 


to earn and his master to spend. He could not read 
nor write, and did not care to do either; and he never 
washed himself, for there was no water up the court 
where he lived. He had never been taught to say his 
prayers. He never had heard of God or of Christ, 
except in words which you never have heard, and 
which it would have been well if he had never heard. 
He cried half his time, and laughed the other half 
He cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing 
his poor knees and elbows raw; and when the soot 
got into his eyes, which it did every day in the week ; 
and when his master beat him, which he did every day 
in the week; and when he had not enough to eat, 
which happened every day in the week likewise. And 
he laughed the other half of the day, when he was 
tossing half-pennies with the other boys, or playing 
leap-frog over the posts, or bowling stones at the horses’ 
legs as they trotted by; which last was excellent fun, 
when there was a wall at hand behind which to hide. 
As for chimney-sweeping, and being hungry, and being 
beaten, he took all that for the way of the world, like 
the rain and snow and thunder, and stood manfully 
with his back to it till it was over, as his old donkey 
did to a hailstorm ; and then shook his ears and was 
as jolly as ever; and thought of the fine times coming, 
when he would be a man, and a master-sweep, and sit 


9 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 

in the public-house with a quart of beer and a long 
pipe, and play cards for silver money, and wear velve- 
teens and ankle-jacks, and keep a white bull-dog with 
one gray ear, and carry her puppies in his pocket, just 
like a man. And he would have apprentices, one, 
two, three, if he could. How he would bully them, 
and knock them about, just as his master did to him; 
and make them carry home the soot-sacks, while he 
rode before them on his donkey, with a pipe in his 
mouth and a flower in his button-hole, like a king at 
the head of his army. Yes, there were good times 
coming; and, when his master let him have a pull at 
the leavings of his beer, Tom was the jolliest boy in 
the whole town. 

One day a smart little groom rode into the court 
where Tom lived. Tom was just hiding behind a 
wall, to heave half a brick at his horse’s legs, as is the 
custom of that country when they welcome strangers ; 
but the groom saw him, and halloed to him to know 
where Mr. Grimes, the chimney-sweep, lived. Now, 
Mr. Grimes was Tom’s own master, and Tom was a 
good man of business, and always civil to customers; 
so he put the half-brick down quietly behind the wall, 
and proceeded to take orders. 

Mr. Grimes was to come up next morning to Sir 
John Harthover’s, at the Place, for his old chimney- 


lO 


The JVater-Bahies : 


sweep was gone to prison, and the chimneys wanted 
sweeping. And so he rode away, not giving Tom 
time to ask what the sweep had gone to prison for, 
which was a matter of interest to Tom, as he had been 
in prison once or twice himself. Moreover, the groom 
looked so very neat and clean, with his drab gaiters, 
drab breeches, drab jacket, snow-white tie with a smart 
pin in it, and clean round ruddy face, that Tom was of- 
fended and disgusted at his appearance, and considered 
him a stuck-up fellow, who gave himself airs because 
he wore smart clothes, and other people paid for them ; 
and went behind the wall to fetch the half-brick after 
all : but did not, remembering that he had come in the 
way of business, and was, as it were, under a flag 
of truce. 

His master was so delighted at his new customer 
that he knocked Tom down out of hand, and drank 
more beer that night than he usually did in two, in 
order to be sure of getting up in time next morning; 
for the more a man’s head aches when he wakes, the 
more glad he is to turn out, and have a breath of fresh 
air. And, when he did get up at four the next morn- 
ing, he knocked Tom down again, in order to teach 
him (as young gentlemen used to be taught at public 
schools) that he must be an extra good boy that day, 
as they were going to a very great house, and might 


11 


J Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby, 

make a very good thing of it, if they could but give 
satisfaction. 

And Tom thought so likewise, and, indeed, would 
have done and behaved his best, even without being 
knocked down. For, of all places upon earth. Hart- 
hover Place (which he had never seen) was the most 
wonderful ; and, of all men on earth. Sir John (whom 
he had seen, having been sent to jail by him twice) 
was the most awful. 

Harthover Place was really a grand place, even for 
the rich North country; with a house so large that 
in the frame-breaking riots, which Tom could just 
remember, the Duke of Wellington, with ten thousand 
soldiers and cannon to match, were easily housed there- 
in; at least, so Tom believed; with a park full of deer, 
which Tom believed to be monsters who were in the 
habit of eating children ; with miles of game-preserves, 
in which Mr. Grimes and the collier-lads poached at 
times, on which occasions Tom saw pheasants, and 
wondered what they tasted like; with a noble salmon- 
river, in which Mr. Grimes and his friends would have 
liked to poach ; but then they must have got into cold 
water, and that they did not like at all. In short, 
Harthover was a grand place, and Sir John a grand 
old man, whom even Mr. Grimes respected, for not 
only could he send Mr. Grimes to prison when he 


12 


The fVater-Babies : 


deserved it, as he did once or twice a week ; not only 
did he own all the land about for miles ; not only was 
he a jolly, honest, sensible squire as ever kept a pack 
of hounds, who would do what he thought right by his 
neighbors, as well as get what he thought right for 
himself; but, what was more, he weighed full fifteen 
stone, was nobody knew how many inches round the 
chest, and could have thrashed Mr. Grimes himself in 
fair fight, which very few folk round there could do, 
and which, my dear little boy, would not have been 
right for him to do, as a great many things are not 
which one both can do, and would like very much 
to do. So Mr. Grimes touched his hat to him^ when 
he rode through the town, and called him a “ buirdly 
awd chap,” and his young ladies “ gradely lasses,” 
which are two high compliments in the North coun- 
try ; and thought that that made up for his poaching 
Sir John’s pheasants; whereby you may perceive that 
Mr. Grimes had not been to a properly inspected Gov- 
ernment National School. 

Now, I dare say, you never got up at three o’clock 
on a midsummer morning. Some people get up then 
because they want to catch salmon ; and some, because 
they want to climb Alps ; and a great many more, 
because they must, like Tom. But, I assure you, that 
three o’clock on a midsummer morning is the pleas^ 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 13 

antest time of all the twenty-four hours, and all the 
three hundred and sixty-five days; and why every one 
does not get up then, I never could tell, save that 
they are all determined to spoil their nerves and their 
complexions by doing all night what they might just 
as weH do all day. But Tom, instead of going out to 
dinner at half-past eight at night, and to a ball at ten, 
and finishing off somewhere between twelve and four, 
went to bed at seven, when his master went to the 
public-house, and slept like a dead pig: for which 
reason he was as piert as a game-cock (who always 
gets up e^rly to wake the maids), and just ready to get 
up when the fine gentlemen and ladies were just ready 
to go to bed. 

So he and his master set out ; Grimes rode the 
donkey in front, and Tom and the brushes walked 
behind ; out of the court, and up the street, past the 
closed window-shutters, and the winking weary police- 
men, and the roofs all shining gray in the gray dawn. 

They passed through the pitmen’s village, all shut 
up and silent now ; and through the turnpike ; and 
then they were out in the real country, and plodding 
along the black dusty road, between black slag walls, 
with no sound but the groaning and thumping of the 
pit-engine in the next field. But soon the road grew 
white, and the walls likewise ; and at the wall’s foot 


»4 


The JVater-Eahies : 


grew long grass and gay flowers, all drenched with 
dew; and instead of the groaning of the pit-engine, 
they heard the skylark saying his matins high up in 
the air, and the pit-bird warbling in the sedges, as he 
had warbled all night long. 

All else was silent. For old Mrs. Earth was still 
fast asleep ; and, like many pretty people, she looked 
still prettier asleep than awake. The great elm-trees 
in the gold-green meadows were fast asleep above, 
and the cows fast asleep beneath them ; nay, the few 
clouds which were about were fast asleep likewise, and 
so tired that they had lain down on the earth to rest, in 
long white flakes and bars, among the stems of the 
elm-trees, and along the tops of the alders by the 
stream, waiting for the sun to bid them rise and go 
about their day’s business in the clear blue overhead. 

On they went; and Tom looked and looked, for he 
never had been so far into the country before ; and 
longed to get over a gate, and pick buttercups, and 
look for birds’ nests in the hedge; but Mr. Grimes was 
a man of business, and would not have heard of that. 

Soon they came up with a poor Irishwoman, trudg- 
ing along with a bundle at her back. She had a gray 
shawl over her head, and a crimson madder petticoat; 
so you may be sure she came from Galway. She had 
neither shoes nor stockings, and limped along as if she 


A Fairy F ale for a Land~Bahy. 15 

were tired and footsore : but she was a very tall hand- 
some woman, with bright gray eyes, and heavy black 
hair hanging about her cheeks. And she took Mr. 
Grimes’s fancy so much, that when he came alongside 
he called out to her ; 

“This is a hard road for a gradely foot like that 
Will ye up, lass, and ride behind me 

But, perhaps, she did not admire Mr. Grimes’s look 
and voice ; for she answered quietly : 

“ No, thank you ; I’d sooner walk with your little 
lad here.” 

“ You may please yourself,” growled Grimes, and 
went on, smoking. 

So she walked beside Tom, and talked to him, and 
asked him where he lived, and what he knew, and all 
about himself, till Tom thought he had never met such 
a pleasant-spoken woman. And she asked him, at last, 
whether he said his prayers ; and seemed sad when he 
told her that he knew no prayers to say. 

Then he asked her where she lived ; and she said 
far away by the sea. And Tom asked her about 
the sea ; and she told him how it rolled and roared 
over the rocks in winter nights, and lay still in the 
bright summer days, for the children to bathe and 
play in it; and many a story more, till Tom longed 
to go and see the sea, and bathe in it likewise. 


i6 Hjc IVater-Bahies : 

At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a 
spring : not such a spring as you see here, which 
soaks up out of a white gravel in the bog, among 
red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet 
white orchis ; nor such a one as you may see, too, 
here, which bubbles up under ’the warm sand-bank 
in the hollow lane, by the great tuft of lady-ferns, 
and makes the sand dance reels at the bottom, day 
and night, all the year round ; not such a spring as 
either of those : but a real North country limestone 
fountain, like one of those in Sicily or Greece, where 
the old heathen fancied the nymphs sat cooling 
themselves the hot summer’s day, while the shep- 
herds peeped at them from behind the bushes. Out 
of a low cave of rock, at the foot of a limestone 
crag, the great fountain rose, quelling and bubbling 
and gurgling, so clear that you could not tell where 
the water ended and the air began; and ran away 
under the road, a stream large enough to turn a 
mill; among blue geranium, and golden globe-flower, 
and wild raspberry, and the bird-cherry with its tassels 
of snow. 

And there Grimes stopped, and looked; and Tom 
looked too. Tom was wondering whether anything 
lived in that dark cave, and came out at night to fly 
in the meadows. But Grimes was not wondering at all 


A Fairy ^‘ale for a Land-Bahy. X'j 

Without a word, he got off his donkey, and clambered 
over the low road -wall, and knelt down, and began 
dipping his ugly head into the spring; and very dirty 
he made it. 

Tom was picking the flowers as fast as he could. 
The Irishwoman helped him, and showed him how to 
tie them up ; and a very pretty nosegay they had made 
between them But when he^saw Grimes actually 
wash, he stopped, quite astonished; and when Grimes 
had finished, and began shaking his ears to dry them, 
he said : 

“ Why, master, I never saw you do that before.” 

Nor will again, most likely. ’T wasn’t for clean- 
liness I did it, but for coolness. I’d be ashamed to 
want washing every week or so, like any smutty 
collier-lad.” 

“ I wish I might go and dip my head in,” said poor 
little Tom. “ It must be as good as putting it under 
the town-pump ; and there is no beadle here to drive a 
chap away.” 

“ Thou come along,” said Grimes. “ What dost 
want with washing thyself Thou did not drink half 
a gallon of beer last night, like me.” 

“ I don’t care for you,” said naughty Torn, and ran 
down to the stream, and began washing his face. 

Grimes was very sulky, because the woman preferred 


2 


i8 


^Tke kk'^ater-BaUes : 


Tom’s company to his; so he dashed at him with 
horrid words, and tore him up from his knees, and 
began beating him. But Tom was accustomed to 
that, and got his head safe between Mr. Grimes’s legs, 
and kicked his shins with all his might. 

“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas Grimes?’’ 
cried the Irishwoman over the wall. 

Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing his name; 
but all he answered was, “No: nor never was yet;” 
and went on beating Tom. 

“ True for you. If you ever had been ashamed of 
yourself, you would have gone over into Vendale long 
ago.” 

“What do you know about Vendale?” shouted 
Grimes; but he left off beating Tom. 

“ I know about Vendale, and about you, too. I 
know, for instance, what happened in Aldermire Copse, 
by night, two years ago come Martinmas.” 

‘^You do?” shouted Grimes; and leaving Tom, 
climbed up over the wall, and faced the woman. 
Tom thought he was going to strike her ; but she 
looked him too full and fierce in the face for that. 

“Yes; I was there,” said the Irishwoman, quietly. 

“You are no Irishwoman, by your speech,” said 
Grimes, after many bad words. 

“Never mind who I am. I saw what 1 saw; 


and if you strike that boy again, I can tell what I 
know.” 

Grimes seemed quite cowed, and got on his donkey 
' without another word. 

“ Stop ! ” said the Irishwoman. “ I have one more 
word for you both; for you will both see me again, 
before all is over. Those that wish to be clean, clean 
they will be ; and those that wish to be foul, foul they 
will be. Remember.” 

And she turned away, and through a gate into the 
/ meadow. Grimes stood still a moment, like a man 
who had been stunned. Then he rushed after her, 
shouting “You come back!” But when he got into 
the meadow, the woman was not there. 

Had she hidden away? There was no place to 
hide in. But Grimes looked about, and Tom also, for 
he was as puzzled as Grimes himself, at her disappear- 
ing so suddenly ; but look where they would, she was 
not there. 

Grimes came back again, as silent as a post, for he 
was a little frightened ; and getting on his donkey, 
filled a fresh pipe, and smoked away, leaving Tom in 
peace. 

And now they had gone three miles and more, and 
came to Sir John’s lodge-gates. 

Very grand lodges they were, with very grand iron 


20 


IVater-Babies : 


gates, and stone gate-posts, and on the top of each a 
most dreadful bogy, all teeth, horns, and tail, which 
was the crest which Sir John’s ancestors wore in the 
Wars of the Roses ; and very prudent men they were 
to wear it, for all their enemies must have run for 
their lives at the very first sight of them. 

Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a keeper 
on the spot, and opened. 

“I was told to expect thee,” he said. “Now, 
thou’lt be so good as to keep to the main avenue, and 
not let me find a hare or a rabbit on thee when thou 
comest back. I shall look sharp for one, I tell thee.” 

“Not if it’s in the bottom of the soot-bag,” quoth 
Grimes, and at that he laughed; and the keeper 
laughed and said, — 

“ If that’s thy sort, I may as well walk up with thee 
to the hall.” 

“ I think thou best had. It’s thy business to see 
after thy game, man, and not mine.” 

So the keeper went with them ; and, to Tom’s sur- 
prise, he and Grimes chatted together all the way quite 
pleasantly. He did not know that a keeper is only 
a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper 
turned inside out. 

They walked up a great lime-avenue, a full mile 
long, and between their stems Tom peeped trembling 


y/ Fairy "Fate for a Land-Baby, 2 1 

at the horns of the sleeping deer, which stood up 
among the ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous 
trees, and as he looked up he fancied that the blue sky- 
rested on their heads. But he was puzzled very much 
by a strange murmuring noise, which followed them 
all the way ; so much puzzled, that, at last he took 
courage to ask the keeper what it was. 

He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for he 
,was horribly afraid of him, which pleased the keeper, 
and he told him that they were the bees about the 
lime-flowers. 

“ What are bees? ” asked Tom. 

“ What make honey.” 

“What is hondy?” asked Tom. 

“ Thou hold thy noise,” said Grimes. 

“ Let the boy be,” said the keeper. “ He’s a civil 
young chap now, and that’s more than he’ll be long, if 
he bides with thee.” 

Grimes laughed, for he took that for a compliment. 

“I wish I were a keeper,” said Tom, “to live in 
such a beautiful place, and wear green velveteens, and 
have a real dog-whistle at my button, like you.” 

The keeper laughed ; he was a kind-hearted fellow 
enough. 

“Let well alone, lad, and ill too, at times. Thy 
life’s safer than mine, at all events ; — eh, Mr. Grimes ? ” 


22 


The PVater-Bahies : 


And Grimes laughed again; and then the two men 
began talking quite low. Tom could hear, though, 
that it was about some poaching fight; and at last 
Grimes said, surlily, — 

“ Hast thou anything against me % ’’ 

“ Not now.” 

“ Then don’t ask me any questions till thou hast, for 
I am a man of honor.” 

And at that they both laughed again, and thought it 
a very good joke. 

And by this time they were come up to the great 
iron gates in front of the house; and Tom stared 
through them at the rhododendrons and azaleas, which 
were all in fiow'er; and then at the house itself, and 
wondered how many chimneys there were in it, and 
how long ago it was built, and what was the man’s 
name that built it, and whether he got much money 
for his job ? 

These last were very difficult questions to answer. 
For Harthover had been built at ninety different times, 
and in nineteen different styles, and looked as if some- 
body had built a whole street' of houses of every 
imaginable shape, and then stirred them together with 
a spoon. 

For the attics were Anglo-Saxon. 

The third floor, Norman. 


23 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby. 

The second, Cinque-cento. 

The first floor, Elizabethan. 

The right wing. Pure Doric. 

The centre. Early English, with a huge portico, 
copied from the Parthenon. 

The left wing. Pure Boeotian, which the country 
folk admired most of all, because it was just like the 
'new barracks in the town, only three times as big. 

The grand staircase was copied from the Catacombs 
at Rome. 

The back staircase, from the Tajmahal at Agra. This 
was built by Sir John’s great-great-great-uncle, who 
won, in Lord Clive’s Indian wars, plenty of money, 
plenty of wounds, and no more taste than his betters. 

The cellars were copied from the caves of Elephanta. 

The offices, from the Pavilion at Brighton. 

And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth, or 
under the earth. 

So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to 
antiquarians, and a thorough Naboth’s vineyard to 
critics, and architects, and all persons who like med- 
dling with other men’s business, and spending other 
men’s money. So they all were setting upon poor Sir 
John, year after year, and trying to talk him into spend- 
ing a hundred thousand pounds or so in building, to 
please them and not himself But he always put them 




T/:e Water-Babies: 


off, like a canny North-countryman as he was. One 
wanted him to build a Gothic house, but he said he 
was no Goth ; and another, to build an Elizabethan, 
but he said he lived under good Queen Victoria, and 
not good Queen Bess ; and another was bold enough to 
tell him that his house was ugly, but he said he lived 
inside it, and not outside ; and another, that there was 
no unity in it, but he said that that was just why 
he liked the old place. For he liked to see how each 
Sir John, and Sir Hugh, and Sir Ralph, and Sir Ran- 
dal, had left his mark upon the place, each after his 
own taste; and he had no more notion of disturbing his 
ancestors’ work than of disturbing their graves. For 
now the house looked like a real live house, that had a 
history, and had grown and grown as the world grew ; 
and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not 
know who his own grandfather was, who would change 
it for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan 
thing, which looked as if it had been all spawned in a 
night, as mushrooms are. From which you may col- 
lect (if you have wit enough), that Sir John was a 
very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire, and just the 
man to keep the country side in order, and show good 
sport with his hounds. 

But Tom and his master did not go in through the 
great iron gates, as if they had been Dukes or Bishops, 


^5 


J Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 

but round the back way ; and a very long way round it 
was; and into a little back-door, where. the ash-boy let 
them in, yawning horribly ; and then in a passage the 
housekeeper met them, in such a flowered chintz dress- 
ing-gown, that Tom mistook her for My Lady herself 
and she gave Grimes solemn orders about “You will 
take care of this, and take care of that,” as if he was 
going up the chimneys, and not Tom. And Grimes 
listened, and said every now and then, .under his voice, 
“You’ll mind that, you little beggar? ” and Tom did 
mind, all at least that he could. And then the house- 
keeper turned them into a grand room, all covered up 
in sheets of brown paper, and bade them begin, in a 
lofty and tremendous voice; and so, after a whimper 
or two, and a kick from his master, into the grate Tom 
went, and up the chimney, while a housemaid stayed 
in the room to watch the furniture ; to whom Mr. 
Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous compliments, 
but met with very slight encouragement in return. 

How many chimneys he swept I cannot say: but he 
swept so many that he got quite tired, and puzzled 
too, for they were not like the town-flues to which he 
was accustomed, but such as you would find — if you 
would only get up them and look, which perhaps you 
would not like to do — in old country houses, large 
and crooked chimneys, which had been altered again 


^he IVater-Bahies : 


26 

and again, till they ran one into another, anastomosing 
(as Professor Owen would sayj considerably. So Tom 
fairly lost his way in them ; not that he cared much 
for that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was 
as much at home in a chimney as a mole is under 
ground ; but at last, coming down as he thought the 
right chimney, he came down the wrong one, and 
found himself standing on the hearth-rug in a room the 
like of which he had never seen before. 

Tom had never seen the like. He had never been 
in gentlefolks’ rooms but when the carpets were all 
up, and the curtains down, and the furniture huddled 
together under a cloth, and the pictures covered with 
aprons and dusters ; and he had often enough won- 
dered what the rooms were like when they were all 
ready for the quality to sit in. And now he saw, and 
he thought the sight very pretty. 

The room was all dressed in white : white window- 
curtains, white bed-curtains, white furniture, and white 
walls, with just a few lines of pink here and there. 
The carpet was all over gay little flowers ; and the 
walls were hung with pictures in gilt frames, which 
amused Tom very much. There were pictures of 
ladies and gentlemen, and pictures of horses and dogs. 
The horses he liked ; but the dogs he did not care for 
much, for there were no bull-dogs among them, nol 


27 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 

even a terrier. But the two pictures which took his 
fancy most were: one, a man in long garments, with 
little children and their mothers round him, who was 
laying his hand upon the children’s heads. That was 
a very pretty picture, Tom thought, to hang in a lady’s 
room. For he could see that it was a lady’s room 
by the dresses which lay about. 

The other picture was that of a man nailed to a 
cross, which surprised Tom much. He fancied that 
he had seen something like it in a shop-window. But 
why was it there ? “ Poor man,” thought Tom ; “ and 
he looks so kind and quiet. But why should the lady 
have such a sad picture as that in her room Perhaps 
it was some kinsman of hers, who had been murdered 
by the savages in foreign parts, and she kept it there 
for a remembrance.” . And Tom felt sad, and awed, 
and turned to look at something else. 

The next thing he saw, and that too puzzled him, 
was a washing-stand, with ewers and basins, and soap 
and brushes, and towels ; and a large bath, full of clean 
water; — what a heap of things, all for washing ! She 
must be a very dirty lady,” thought Tom, ‘by my 
master’s rule, to want as much scrubbing as all that. 
But she- must be very cunning to put the dirt out of 
the way so well afterwards, for I don’t see a speck 
about the room, not even on the very towels.” 


28 


Th ^ater-Babies : 


And then, looking toward the bed, he saw that dirt)' 
lady, and held his breath with astonishment. 

Under the snow-white coverlet, upon the snow-white 
pillow, lay the most beautiful little girl that Tom had 
ever seen. Her cheeks were almost as white as the 
pillow, and her hair was like threads of gold spread 
all about over the bed. She might have been as old as 
Tom, or maybe a year or two older; but Tom did not 
think of that. He thought only of her delicate skin 
and golden hair, and wondered whether she were a real 
live person, or one of the wax dolls he had seen in the 
shops. But when he saw her breathe, he made up his 
mind that she was alive, and stood staring at her, as 
if she had been an angel out of heaven. 

No. She cannot be dirty. She never could have 
been dirty, thought Tom to himself And then he 
thought, “ And are all people like that when they are 
washed ^ ” And he looked at his own wrist, and tried 
to rub the soot off, and wondered whether it ever would 
come off. “ Certainly I should look much prettier 
then, if I grew at all like her.” 

And looking round, he suddenly saw, standing close 
to him, a little, ugly, black, ragged figure, with bleared 
eyes and grinning white teeth. He turned on it an- 
grily. What did such a little black ape want in that 
sweet young lady’s loom ? And behold, it was him 


ji Fairy 'Fale for a Land-Bahy. 2 g 

self, reflected in a great mirror, the like of which Tom 
had never seen before. 

And Tom, for the first time in his life, found out 
that he was dirty; and burst into tears with shame and 
anger; and turned to sneak up the chimney again and 
hide, and upset the fender, and threw the fire-irons 
down, with a noise as of ten thousand tin kettles tied 
to ten thousand mad dogs’ tails. 

Up jumped the little white lady in her bed, and, 
seeing Tom, screamed as shrill as any peacock. In 
rushed a stout old nurse from the next room, and see- 
ing Tom likewise, made up her mind that he had 
come to rob, plunder, destroy, and burn ; and dashed 
at him, as he lay over the fender, so fast that sht 
caught him by the jacket. 

But she did not hold him. Tom had been in 3 
policeman’s hands many a time, and out of them too, 
what is more ; and he would have been ashamed to 
face his friends forever if he had been stupid enough 
to be caught by an old woman : so he doubled under 
the good lady’s arm, across the room, and out of the 
window in a moment. 

He did not need to drop out, though he would have 
done so bravely enough. Nor even to let himself 
down a spout, which would have been an old game to 
him ; for once he got up by a spout to the church-roof, 


30 


T!he IVater-Babies : 


he said to take jackdaws’ eggs, but the policemen said 
to steal lead ; and when he was seen on high, sat there 
till the sun got too hot, and came down by another 
spout, leaving the policemen to go back to the station- 
house and eat their dinners. 

But all under the window spread a tree, with great 
leaves, and sweet w^hite flowers, almost as big as his 
head. It was a magnolia, I suppose; but Tom knew 
nothing about that, and cared less ; for down the tree 
he went, like a cat, and across the garden-lawn, and 
over the iron railings, and up the park towards the 
wood, leaving the old nurse to scream murder and fire 
at the window. 

The under-gardener, mowing, saw Tom, and threw 
down his scythe, caught his leg in it, and cut his shin 
open, whereby he kept his bed for a week; but in his 
hurry he never knew it, and gave chase to poor Tom. 
The dairy-maid heard the noise, got the churn between 
her knees, and tumbled over it, spilling all the cream ; 
and yet she jumped up, and gave chase to Tom. A 
groom cleaning Sir John’s hack at the stables let him 
go loose, whereby he kicked himself lame in five min- 
utes; but he ran out, and gave chase to Tom. Grimes 
upset the soot-sack in the new-gravelled yard, and 
spoilt it all utterly ; but he ran out, and gave chase 
to Tom. The old steward opened the park-gate in 


J Fairy 'Fale for a Land-Baby, 3 1 

such a hurry, that he hung his pony’s chin upon the 
spikes, and for aught I know it hangs there still ; but 
he jumped off, and gave chase to Tom. The plough- 
man left his horses at the headland, and one jumped 
over the fence, and pulled the other into the ditch, 
plough and all ; but he ran on, and gave chase to 
Tom. The keeper, who was taking a stoat out of a 
trap, let the stoat go, and caught his own finger ; but 
he jumped up, and ran after Tom, and, considering what 
he said and how he looked, I should have been sorry 
for Tom if he had caught him. Sir John looked out 
of his study-window (for he was an early old gentle- 
man) and up at the nurse, and a marten dropt mud 
in his eye, so that he had at last to send for the doctor; 
and yet he ran out, and gave chase to Tom. The 
Irishwoman, too, was walking up to the house to 
beg ; she must have got round by some by-way ; but 
she threw away her bundle, and gave chase to Tom 
likewise. Only my lady did not give chase ; for when 
she had put her head out of the window, her night-wig 
fell into the garden, and she had to ring up her lady’s 
maid, and send her down for it privately ; which quite 
put her out of the running, so that she came in no 
where, and is consequently not placed. 

In a word, never was there heard at Hall Place — 
not even when the fox was killed in the conservatory 


"The fVater-Bahies ; 


3 ^ 

among acres of broken glass, and tons of smashed 
flower-pots — such a noise, row, hubbub, babel, shindy 
hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of 
dignity, repose, and order, as that day, when Grimes, 
the gardener, the groom, the dairy-maid. Sir John, the 
steward, the ploughman, the keeper, and the Irish- 
woman, all ran up the park, shouting “Stop thief!” 
in the belief that Tom had at least a thousand pounds’ 
worth of jewels in his empty pockets ; and the very 
magpies and jays followed Tom up, screaking and 
screaming as if he were a hunted fox, beginning to 
droop his brush. 

And all the while poor Tom paddled up the park 
with his little bare feet, like a small black gorilla flee- 
ing to the forest. Ahs for him ! there was no big 
father gorilla therein to take his part ; to scratch out 
the gardener’s inside with one paw, toss the dairy-maid 
into a tree with another, and wrench off Sir John’s 
head with a third, while he cracked the keeper’s scull 
with his teeth, as easily as if it had been a cocoa-nut 
or a paving-stone. 

However, Tom did not remember ever having had 
a father ; so he did not look for one, and expected to 
have to take care of himself; while, as for running, h( 
could keep up for a couple of miles^with any stage- 
coach, if there was the chance of a copper or a cigar-end, 


33 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 

and turn coach-wheels on his hands and feet ten times 
following, which is more than you can do. Wherefore 
his pursuers found it very difficult to catch him ; and 
we will hope that they did not catch him at all, 

Tom, of course, made for the woods. He had 
never been in a wood in his life; but he was sharp 
enough to know that he might hide in a bush, or swarm 
up a tree, and, altogether, had more chance there than 
in the open field. If he had not known that, he would 
have been foolisher than a mouse or a minnow. 

But when he got into the wood, he found it a very 
different sort of place from what he had fancied. He 
pushed into a thick cover of rhododendrons, and found 
himself at once caught in a trap. The boughs laid 
hold of his legs and arms, poked him in his face 
and his stomach, made him shut his eyes tight (though 
that was no great lo’ss, for he could not see at best 
a yard before his nose) ; and when he got through 
the rhododendrons, the hassock-grass and sedges tum- 
bled him over, and cut his poor little fingers afterwards 
most spitefully ; the birches birched him as soundly 
as if he had been a nobleman at Eton, and over the 
face too (which is not fair switching, as all brave boys 
will agree); and the lawyers tripped him up, and tore 
his shins as if they had sharks’ teeth — which lawyers 
are likely enough to have. 


34 


T!he JVater-Babies : 


" I must get out of this,” thought Tom, “ or I shall 
stay here till somebody comes to help me, — which is 
just what 1 don’t want.” 

But how to get out was the difficult matter. And 
indeed I don’t think he would ever have got out 
at all, but have staid there till the cock-robins covered 
him with leaves, if he had not suddenly run his head 
against a wall. 

Now, running your head against a wall is not pleas- 
ant, especially if it is a loose wall, with the stones 
all set on edge, and a sharp-cornered one hits you 
between the eyes, and makes you see all manner of 
beautiful stars. The stars are very beautiful, certainly; 
but unfortunately they go in the twenty-thousandth 
part of a split second, and the pain which comes after 
them does not. And so Tom hurt his head ; but he 
was a brave boy, and did not mind that a penny. He 
guessed that over the wall the cover would end ; and 
up it he went, and over like a squirrel. 

And there he was, out on the great grouse-moors, 
which the country folk called Harthover Fell — 
heather and bog and rock, stretching away and up, 
up to the very sky. 

Now, Tom was a cunning little fellow — as cunning 
as an old Exmoor stag. Why not ? Though he 
was but ten years old, he had lived longer than most 


A Fairy Hale for a Land-Baby, 35 

stags, and had more wits to start with into the bar- 
gain. 

He knew as well as a stag, that if he backed he 
might throw the hounds out. So the first thing he 
did when he was over the wall, was, to make the 
neatest double sharp to his right, and run along under 
the wall for nearly half a mile. 

Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the steward, 
and the gardener, and the ploughman, and the dairy- 
maid, and all the hue-and-cry together, went on ahead 
half a mile in the very opposite direction, and inside 
the wall, leaving him a mile off on the outside, while 
Tom heard their shouts die away in the wood, and 
chuckled to himself merrily. 

At last he came to a dip in the land, and went 
to the bottom of it, and then he turned bravely 
away from the wall, and up the moor ; for he knew 
that he had put a hill between him and his enemies, 
and could go on without their seeing him. 

But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen 
which way Tom went. She had kept ahead of every 
one the whole time ; and yet she neither walked nor 
ran. She went along quite smoothly and gracefully, 
while her feet twinkled past each other so fast, that 
you could not see which was foremost ; till every one 
asked the other who the strange woman was? and 


The IVater-Bahies : 


36 

all agreed, for want of anything better to say, that 
she must be in league with Tom. 

But when she came to the plantation they lost sight 
of her; and they could do no less. For she went 
quietly over the wall after Tom, and followed him 
wherever he went. Sir John and the rest saw no 
more of her; and out of sight was out of mind. 

And now Tom was right away into the heather, 
over just such a moor as those in which you have 
been bred, except that there were rocks and stones 
lying about everywhere ; and that instead of the moor 
growing flat as he went upwards, it grew more and 
more broken and hilly; but not so rough but that 
little Tom could jog along well enough, and find 
time, too, to stare about at the strange place, which 
was like a new world to him. 

He saw great spiders there, with crowns and crosses 
marked on their backs, who sat in the middle of their 
webs, and when they saw Tom coming, shook them 
so fast that they became invisible. Then he saw 
lizards, brown and gray and green, and thought they 
were snakes, and .would sting him. ; but they were 
as much frightened as he, and shot away into the 
heath. And then, under a rock, he saw a pretty 
sight, — a great brown sharp-nosed creature, with a 
white tag to her brush, and round her four or five 




A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 

smutty little cubs, the funniest fellows Tom ever saw. 
She lay on her back, rolling about, and stretching 
out her legs and head and tail in the bright sunshine; 
and the cubs jumped over her, and ran round her, 
and nibbled her paws, and lugged her about by the 
tail ; and she seemed to enjoy it mightily. But one 
selfish little fellow stole away from the rest to a dead 
crow close by, and dragged it off to hide it, though 
it was nearly as big as he was. Whereat all his 
little brothers set off after him in full cry, and saw 
Tom; and then all ran back; and up jumped Mrs. 
Vixen, and caught one up in her mouth, and the 
rest toddled after her, and into a dark crack in the 
rocks ; and there was an end of the show. 

And next he had a fright ; for as he scrambled 
up a sandy brow — whirr-poof-poof-cock-cock-kick — 
something went off in his face, with a most horrid 
noise. He thought the ground had blown up, and 
the end of the world come. 

And when he opened his eyes (for he shut them 
very tight), it was only an old cock-grouse, who had 
been washing himself in sand, like an Arab, for want 
of water; and who, when Tom had all but trodden 
on him, jumped up, with a noise like the express 
train, leaving his wife and children to shift for them- 
selves, like an old coward; and w*ent off, screaming 


Water-Babies ; 


38 

“ Cur-rU“U-uck, cur-ru-u-uck — murder, thieves, fire — 
cur-u-uck-cock-kick — the end of the world is come 
— kick-kick-cock-kick.” He was always fancying that 
the end of the world was come when anything hap- 
pened which was farther off than the end of his own 
nose. But the end of the world was not come, any 
more than the twelfth of August was, though the 
old grouse-cock was quite certain of it. 

So the old grouse came back to his wife and family 
an hour afterwards, and said, solemnly, “ Cock-cock- 
kick; my dears, the end of the world is not quite 
come; but I assure you it is coming the day after 
to-morrow — cock.” But his wife had heard that so 
often, that she knew all about it, and a little more. 
And, beside, she was the mother of a family, and 
had seven little poults to wash and feed every day; 
and that made her very practical and a little sharp-tem- 
pered; so all she answered was: “Kick-kick-kick — 
go and catch spiders, go and catch spiders — kick.” 

So Tom went on, and on, he hardly knew why; 
but he liked the great, wide, strange place, and the 
cool, fresh, bracing air. But he went more and more 
slowly as he got higher up the hill; for now the 
ground grew very bad indeed. Instead of soft turf 
and springy heMer, he met great patches of flat 
limestone rock, just like ill-made pavements, with 


J Fairy Tiale for a Land-Baby. 35 

deep cracks between the stones, and ledges, filled with 
ferns ; so he had to hop from stone to stone, and now 
and then he slipped in between and hurt his little 
bare toes, though they were tolerably tough ones; but 
still he would go on and up, he could not tell why. 

What would Tom have said if he had seen, walk- 
ing over the moor behind him, the very same Irish- 
woman who had taken his part upon the road ? But 
whether it was that he looked too little behind him, 
or whether it was that she kept out of sight behind 
the rocks and knolls, he never saw her, though she 
saw him. 

And now he began to get a little hungry, and very 
thirsty; for he had run a long way, and the sun had 
risen high in heaven, and the rock was as hot as an 
oven, and the air danced reels over it as it does over 
a limekiln, till everything round seemed quivering 
and melting in the glare. 

But he could see nothing to eat anywhere, and 
still less to drink. 

The heath was full of bilberries and whimberries; 
but they were only in flower yet, for it was June. 
And as for water, who can find that on the top of 
a limestone rock*? Now and then he passed by a 
deep dark swallow-hole, going down into the earth 
as if it was the chimney of some dwarf’s house under- 


40 


"The fVater-Babies : 


ground; and more than once, as he passed, he could 
hear water falling, trickling, tinkling, many, many feet 
below. How he longed to get down to it, and cool 
his poor baked lips! But, brave little- chimney-sweep 
as he was, he dared not climb down such chimneys as 
those. 

So he went on, and on, till his head spun round 
with the heat, and he thought he heard church-bells 
ringing, a long way off. 

“ Ah ! ” he thought, “ where there is a church, there 
will be houses and people; and, perhaps, some one 
will give me a bit and a sup.” So he set off again, 
to look for the church ; for he was sure that he heard 
^he bells quite plain. 

And in a minute more, when he looked round, he 
stopped again, and said, Why, what a big place the 
world is ! ” 

And so it was ; for, from the top of the mountain, 
he could see — what could he not see? 

Behind him, far below, was Harthover, and the dark 
woods, and the shining salmon river; and on his left, 
far below, was the town, and the smoking chimneys 
of the collieries; and far, far away, the river widened 
to the shining sea; and little white specks, which were 
ships, lay on its bosom. Before him lay, spread out 
like a map, great plains, and farms, and villages, amid 


4 ^ 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 

dark knots of trees. They all seemed at his very 
feet; but he had sense to see that they were long miles 
away. 

And to his right rose moor after moor, hill after 
hill, till they faded away, blue into blue sky. But 
between him and those moors, and really at his very 
feet, lay something, to which, as soon* as Tom saw 
it, he determined to go, for that was the place for him. 

A deep, deep green and rocky valley, very narrow, 
and filled with wood; but through the wood, hundreds 
of feet below him, he could see a clear stream glance. 
Oh, if he could but get down to that stream ! Then, .. 
by the stream, he saw the roof of a little cottage, and 
a little garden, set out in squares and beds. And there ^ 
was a tiny little red thing moving in the garden, no 
bigger than a fly. As Tom looked down, he saw that 
it was a woman in a red petticoat. Ah ! perhaps she 
would give him something to eat. And there were the 
church-bells ringing again. Surely there must be a 
village down there. Well, nobody would know him, 
or what had happened at the Place. The news could 
not have got there yet, even if Sir John had set all the 
policemen in the county after him ; and he could get 
down there in five minutes. 

Tom was quite right about the hue-and-cry not 
having got thither; for he had come, without knowing 


42 


The IVater-Babies : 


it, the best part of ten miles from Harthover ; but he 
was wrong about getting down in five minutes, for the 
cottage was more than a mile off, and a good thousand 
feet below. 

However, down he went, like a brave little man as 
he was, though he was very foot-sore, and tired, and 
hungry, and thirsty; while the church-bells rang sc 
loud, he began to think that they must be inside his 
own head, and the river chimed and tinkled far below ; 
and this was the song which it sang: — 

Clear and cool, clear and cool, 

By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool ; 

Cool and clear, cool and clear. 

By shining shingle, and foaming wear ; 

■ Under the crag where the ouzel sings. 

And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings, 

Undefiled, for the undefiled ; 

Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. 

Dank and foul, dank and foul, 

By the smoky town in its murky cowl ; 

Foul and dank, foul and dank, 

By wharf and sewer and slimy bank ; 

Darker and darker the further I go, 

Baser and baser the richer I grow ; 

. Who dare sport with the sin-defiled ? 

Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child. 

Strong and free, strong and free. 

The floodgates are open, away to the sea ; 

Free and strong, free and strong. 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 4.*^ 

Cleansing my streams as I hurry along 
To the golden sands, and the leaping bar, 

And the taintless tide that awaits me afar. 

As I lose myself in the infinite main. 

Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again. 

Undefiled, for the undefiled, 

Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. 

So Tom went down; and all the while he never 
saw the Irishwoman going down behind him. 


H 


The IVater-Babki 


CHAPTER II. 


“ And is there care in heaven ? and is there love 
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base 
That may compassion of their evils move ? 

There is : — else much more wretched were the case 
Of men than beasts : But oh! the exceeding grace 
Of Highest God that loves His creatures so, 

And all His works with mercy doth embrace, 

That blessed Angels He sends to and fro. 

To serve to wicked man, to serve His wicked foe 1 ” 

Spenser. 



MILE off, and a thousand feet 
down. So Tom found it; 

though it seemed as if he 
could have chucked a pebble 
on to the back of the woman 
in the red petticoat, who was 
weeding in the garden, or even 
across the dale to the rocks beyond. 

For the bottom of the valley was just one field 


45 


^ Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 

broad, and on the other side ran the stream ; and 
above it, gray crag, gray down, gray stair, gray moor, 
walled up to heaven. 

A quiet, silent, rich, happy place; a narrow crack 
cut deep into the earth; so deep, and so out of the 
way, that the bad bogies can hardly find it out. The 
name of the place is Vendale; and if you want to 
see it for yourself, you must go up into the High 
Craven, and search from Bolland Forest north by 
Ingleborough, to the Nine Standards and Cross Fell ; 
and if you have not found it, you must turn south, 
and search the Lake Mountains, down to Scaw Fell 
and the sea ; and then if you have not found it, you 
must go northward again by merry Carlisle, and search 
the Cheviots all across, from Annan Water to Berwick. 
Law; and then, whether you have found Vendale 
or not, you will have found such a country, and such 
a people, as ought to make you proud of being a 
British boy. 

So Tom went to go down; and first he went down 
three hundred feet of steep heather, mixed up with 
loose brown gritstone, as rough as a file ; which was 
not pleasant to his poor little heels, as he came bump, 
stump, jump, down the steep. And still he thought 
he could throw a stone into the garden. 

Then he went down three hundred feet of limestone 


^he Water-Bahies : 


46 

terraces, one below the other, as straight as if Mr 
George White had ruled them with his ruler and then 
cut them out with his chisel. There was no heath 
there, but — 

First, a little grass slope, covered with the prettiest 
flowers, rock-rose and saxifrage, and thyme and basil, 
and all sorts of sweet herbs. 

Then bump down a two-foot step of limestone. 

Then another bit of grass and flowers. 

Then bump down a one-foot step. 

Then another bit of grass and flowers for fifty 
yards, as steep as the house-roof, where he had to 
slide down on his dear little tail. 

Then another step of stone, ten feet high ; and there 
he had to stop himself, and crawl along the edge to 
find a crack ; for if he had rolled over, he would have 
rolled right into the old woman’s garden, and fright- 
ened her out of her wits. 

Then, when he had found a dark narrow crack, full 
of green-stalked fern, such as hangs in the basket in 
the drawing-room, and had. crawled down through it, 
with knees and elbows, as he would down a chim- 
ney, there was another grass slope, and another step, 
and so on, till — oh, dear me ! I wish it was all over; 
and so did he. And yet he thought he could throw a 
stone into the old woman’s garden. 


47 


J Fairy T^ale for a Land-Baby, 

At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs; 
whitebeam with its great silver-backed leaves, and 
mountain-ash, and oak ; and below them cliff and crag, 
cliff and crag, with great beds of crown-ferns and 
wood-sage; while through the shrubs he could see the 
stream sparkling, and hear it murmur on the white 
pebbles. He did not know that it was three hundred 
feet below. 

You would have been giddy, perhaps, at looking 
down; but Tom was not. He was a brave little 
chimney-sweep ; and when he found himself on the top 
of a high cliff, instead of sitting down and crying for 
his baba (though he never had had any baba to cry 
for), he said — Ah, this will just suit me!” though 
he was very tired ; and down he went, by stock and 
stone, sedge and ledge, bush and rush, as if he had 
been born a jolly little black ape, with four hands 
instead of two. 

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman 
coming down behind him. 

But he was getting terribly tired now. The burn- 
ing sun on the fells had sucked him up; but the 
damp heat of the woody crag sucked him up still 
more; and the perspiration ran out of the ends of his 
fingers and toes, and washed him cleaner than he had 
been for a whole year. But, of course, he dirtied every- 


48 


IVater-Bahies : 


thing terribly as he went. There has been a great 
black smudge all down the crag ever since. And there 
have been more black beetles in Vendale since than 
ever were known . before ; all, of course, ov/ing to 
Tom’s having blacked the original papa of them all, 
just as he was setting off to be married, with a sky-blue 
coat and scarlet leggings, as smart as a gardener’s dog 
with a polyanthus in his mouth. 

At last he got to the bottom. But, behold, it was 
not the bottom — as people usually find when they are 
coming down a mountain. For at the foot of the crag 
were heaps and heaps of fallen limestone of every size 
from that of your head to that of a stage-wagon, with 
holes between them full of sweet heath-fern ; and before 
Tom got through them, he was out in the bright sun- 
shine again ; and then he felt, once for all and sud- 
denly, as people generally do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat. 

You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, 
little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to 
live, let you be as strong and healthy as you may ; and 
when you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling. I 
hope that that day you may have a stout stanch friend 
by you who is not beat ; for if you have not, you had 
best lie where you are, and wait for better times, as 
poor Tom did. 

He could not get on. The sun was burning, and 


49 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 

yet he felt chill all over. He was quite empty, and 
yet he felt quite sick. There was but two hundred 
yards of smooth pasture between him and the cottage, 
and yet he could not walk down it. He could hear 
the stream murmuring only one field beyond it, and 
yet it seemed to him as if it was a hundred miles off 

He lay down on the grass till the beetles ran over 
him, and the flies settled on his nose. I don’t know 
when he would have got up again, if the gnats and 
the midges had not taken compassion on him. But 
the gnats blew their trumpets so loud in his ear, and 
the midges nibbled so at his hands and face wherever 
they could find a place free from soot, that at last he 
woke up, and stumbled away, down over a low wall, 
and into a narrow road, and up to the cottage-door. 

And a neat pretty cottage it was, ‘with dipt yew- 
hedges all round the garden, and yews inside too, cut 
into peacocks and trumpets and teapots and all kinds 
of queer shapes. And out of the open door came a 
noise like that of the frogs on the Great- A, when they 
know that it is going to be scorching hot to-morrow, — 
and how they know that I don’t know, and you don’t 
know, and nobody knows. 

He came slowly up to the open door, which was all 
hung round with clematis and roses; and then peeped 
in, half afraid. 


4 


T^he fVater-Bahies : 


JO 


And there sat by the empty fireplace, which was 
filled with a pot of sweet herbs, the nicest old woman 
that ever was seen, in her red petticoat, and short 
dimity bedgown, and clean white cap, with a black 
silk handkerchief over it, tied under her chin. At 
her feet sat the grandfather of all the cats ; and oppo- 
site her sat, on two benches, twelve or fourteen neat 
rosy chubby little children, learning their Chris-cross- 
row; and gabble enough they made about it 

Such a pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny ^^ean 
stone floor, and curious old prints on the walls, and 
an old black oak sideboard full of bright pewter and 
brass dishes, and a cuc''oo clock in the corner, which 
began shouting as soon as Tom appeared; not that 
it was frightened at Tom, but that it was just eleven 
o’clock. 

All the children started at Tom’s dirty black figure ; 
the girls begarf to cry, and the boys began to laugh, 
and all pointed at him rudely enough; but Tom was 
too tired to care for that. 

“What art thou, and what dost want*?” cried the 
old dame. “ A chimney-sweep ! Away with thee. 
I’ll have no sweeps here.” 

“ Water,” said poor little Tom, quite faint. 

“ Water ? There’s plenty i’ the beck,” she said, 
quite sharply. 


Ji Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 51 

“ But I can’t get there; I’m most clemmed with 
hunger and drought.” And Tom sank down upon 
the door-step, and laid his head against the post. 

And the old dame looked at him through her spec- 
tacles one minute, and two, and three; and then she 
said, “ He ’s sick ; and a bairn’s a bairn, sweep or none.” 

“ Water,” said Tom. 

“ God forgive me ! ” and she put by her spectacles, 
and rose, and came to Tom. “ Water’s bad for thee ; 
I’ll give thee milk.” And she toddled off into the next 
room, and brought a cup of milk and a bit of bread. 

Tom drank the milk off at one draught, and then 
looked up, revived. : 

“ Where didst come from ? ” said the dame. 

“ Over Fell, there,” said Tom, and pointed up into 
the sky. 

“ Over Harthover ? and down Lewthwaite Crag ^ 
Art sure thou art not lying ? ” 

“Why should I ? ” said Tom, and leant his head 
against the post. 

“ And how got ye up there ? ” 

“ I came over from the Place,” and Tom was so 
tired and desperate he had no heart or time to think 
of a story, so he told all the truth in a few words. 

“ Bless thy little heart ! And thou hast not beer 
stealing, then ? ” 




T/:e IVater-Bahies : 


“No.” 

“Bless thy little heart! and I’ll warrant not. Why, 
God’s guided the bairn, because he was innocent I 
Away from the Place, and over Harthover Fell, 
and down Lewthwaite Crag! Who ever heard the 
like, if God hadn’t . led him ? Why dost not eat 
thy bread '? ” 

“ I can’t.” 

“ It’s good enough, for I made it myself” 

“ I can’t,” said Tom, and he laid his head on his 
knees, and then asked — 

“Is it Sunday^” 

“No, then; why should it be?” 

. “ Because I hear the church-bells ringing so.” 

Bless thy pretty heart ! The bairn’s sick. Come 
wi’ me, and I’ll hap thee up somewhere. If thou 
wert a bit cleaner I’d put thee in my own bed, for 
the Lord’s sake? But come along here.” 

But when Tom tried to get up, he was so tired and 
giddy that she had to help him and lead him. 

She put him in an out-house upon soft sweet hay 
and an old rug, and bade him sleep off his walk, and 
she would come to him when school was over, in an 
hour’s time. 

And so she went in again, expecting Tom to fall 
fast asleep at once. 


53 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 

But Tom did not fall asleep. 

Instead of it he turned and tossed and kicked about 
in the strangest way, and felt so hot all over that he 
longed to get into the river and cool himself; and then 
he fell half asleep, and dreamt that he heard the little 
white lady crying to him, “Oh, you're so dirty; go 
and be washed ; ” and then that he heard the Irish- 
woman saying, “ Those that wish to be clean, clean 
they will be.” And then he heard the church-bells 
ring so loud, close to him, too, that he was sure it 
must be Sunday, in spite of what the old dame had 
said ; and he would go to church, and see what a 
church was like inside, for he had never been in one, 
poor little fellow, in all his life. But the people would 
never let him come in, all over soot and dirt like that. 
He must go to the river and wash first. And he said 
out loud again and again, though being half asleep he 
did not know it, “ I must be clean, I must be clean.” 

And all of a sudden he found himself, not in the 
out-house on the hay, but in the middle of a meadow, 
over the road, with the stream just before him, saying 
continually, “ I must be clean, I must be clean.” He 
had got there on his own ^egs, between sleep and 
awake, as children will often get out of bed, and go 
about the room, when they are not quite well. But he 
was not a bit surprised, and Went on to the bank of 


The W'ater-Bahks : 


J4 

the brook, and lay down on the grass, and looked into 
the clear limestone water, with every pebble at the 
bottom bright and clean, while the little silver trout 
dashed about in fright at the sight of his black face ; 
and he dipped his hand in and found it so cool, cool, 
cool ; and he said, “ I will be a fish ; I will swim in 
the water ; I must be clean, I must be clean.” 

So he pulled off all his clothes in such haste that he 
tore some of them, which was easy enough with such 
ragged old things. And he put his poor hot sore feet 
into the water ; and then his legs ; and the further he 
went in, the more the church-bells rang in his head. 

“Ah,” said Tom, “ I must be quick and wash my- 
self ; the bells are ringing quite loud now : and they 
will stop soon, and then the door will be shut, and I 
shall never be able to get in at all.” 

Tom was mistaken: for in England the church- 
doors are left open all service-tim.e for everybody who 
likes to come in, Churchman or Dissenter ; ay, even if 
he were a Turk or a Heathen; and if any man dared 
to turn him out, as long as he behaved quietly,' the 
good old English law would punish that man, as he 
deserved, for ordering i|ny peaceable person out of 
God’s house, which belongs to all alike. But Tom 
did not know that, any 'more than he knew a great 
deal more which people^ ought to know. 

\ 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land^Bahy, 

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman: 
not behind him* this time, but before. 

For just before he came to the river-side, she had 
stept down into the cool clear water ; and her shawl 
and her petticoat floated off her, and the green water- 
weeds floated round her sides, and the white water- 
lilies floated round her head, and the fairies of the 
stream came up from the bottom, and bore her away 
and down upon their arms ; for she was the Queen of 
them all ; and perhaps of more besides. 

“ Where have you been ” they asked her. 

“ I have been smoothing sick folk’s pillows, and 
whispering sweet dreams into their ears ; opening 
cottage casements, to let out the stifling air; coaxing 
little children away from gutters and foul pools, where 
fever breeds ; turning women from the gin-shop door, 
and staying men’s hands as they were going to strike 
their wives; doing all I can to help those who will 
not help themselves : and little enough that is, and 
weary work for me. But I have brought you a new 
little brother, and watched him safe all the way here.” 

Then all the fairies laughed for joy at the thought 
that they had a little brother coming. 

But mind, maidens, he must not see you, or know 
that you are here. He is but a savage now, and like 
the beasts which perish ; and from the beasts which 


"The IVater-Bahies : 


56 

perish he must learn. So you must not play with 
him, or speak to him, or let him see you ; but only 
keep him from being harmed.” 

Then the fairies were sad, because they could not 
play with their new brother; but they always did what 
they were told. 

And their Queen floated away down the river; and 
whither she went, thither she came. But all this Tom, 
of course, never saw or heard ; and perhaps if he had, 
it would have made little difference in the story ; for 
he was so hot and thirsty, and longed so to be clean 
for once, that he tumbled himself as quick as he could 
into the clear cool stream. 

And he had not been in it two minutes before he 
fell fast asleep, into the quietest, sunniest, cosiest sleep 
that ever he had in his life; and he dreamt about 
the green meadows by which he had walked that 
morning, and the tall elm-trees, and the sleeping cows : 
and after that he dreamt of nothing at all. 

The reason of his falling into such a delightful 
sleep is very simple.; and yet hardly any one has 
found it out. It was merely that’ the fairies took 
him. 

Some people think that there are no fairies. Cousin 
Cramchild tells little folks so in his Conversations. 
Well, perhaps there are none — in Boston, U. S., where 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Bahy, 


SI 


he was raised. There are only a clumsy lot of 
spirits there, who can’t make people hear without 
thumping on the table; but they get their living 
thereby, and I suppose that is all they want. And 
Aunt Agitate, in her Arguments on political econ- 
omy, says there are none. Well, perhaps there are 
none^ — in her political economy. But it is a wide 
world, my little man, — and thank Heaven for it, for 
else, between crinolines and theories, some of us would 
get squashed, — and plenty of room in it for fairies, 
without people seeing them ; unless, of course, they 
look in the right place. The most wonderful and the 
strongest things in the world, you know, are just the 
things which no one can see. There is life in you ; 
and it is the life in you which makes you grow, and 
move, and think : and yet you can’t see it. And there 
is steam in a steam-engine; and that is what makes it 
move : and yet you can’t see it. And so there may 
be fairies in the world, and they may be just what 
makes the world go round to the old tune of 

“ C’est I’amour, I’amour, I’amour 
Qui fait la monde k la ronde ” ; 

and yet no one may be able to see them except 
those whose hearts are going round to that same tune. 
At all events, we will make believe that- there are 
fairies in the world. It will not be the last time 


‘The JVaterrBahies : 


58 

by many a one that we shall have to make believe 
And yet, after all, there is no need for that. There 
must be fairies; for this is a fairy-tale: and how can 
one have a fairy-tale if there are no fairies 

You don’t see the logic of that ? Perhaps not. 
Then please not to see the logic of a great many 
arguments exactly like it, which you will hear before 
your beard is gray. 

The kind old dame came back at twelve, when 
school was over, to look at Tom; but there was no 
Tom there. She looked about for his footprints ; but 
the ground was so hard that there was no slot, as 
they say in dear old North Devon. And if you 
grow up to be a brave healthy man, you may know 
some day what no slot means, and know, too, I hope, 
what a slot does mean, — a broad slot, with blunt 
claws, which makes a man put out his cigar, and set 
his teeth, and tighten his girths, when he sees it; 
and what^his rights mean, if he has. them, brow, bay, 
tray, and points; and see something worth seeing 
between Haddon Wood and Countisbury Cliffy with 
good Mr. Palk Collyns to show you the way, and 
mend your bones as fast as you smash them. Only 
when that jolly day comes, please don’t break your 
neck : stogged in a mire you never will be, I trust, 
for you are a heath-cropper bred and born. 


59 


J Fairy Tale for a Land-Bahy. 

So the old dame went in again quite sulky, think 
ing that little Tom had tricked her with a false story, 
and shammed ill, and then ran away again. 

But she altered her mind the next day. For, when 
Sir John and the rest of them had run themselves 
out of breath, and lost Tom, they went back again, 
looking very foolish. 

And they looked more foolish still when Sir John 
heard more of the story from the nurse; and more 
foolish still, again, when they heard the whole story 
from Miss Ellie, the little lady in white. All she 
had seen was a poor little black chimney-sweep, crying 
and sobbing, and going to get up the chimney again. 
Of course, she was very much frightened; and no 
wonder. But that was all. The boy had taken 
nothing in the room ; by the mark of his little sooty 
feet, they could see that he had never been off the 
hearth-rug till the nurse caught hold of him. It was 
all a mistake. * 

So Sir John told Grimes to go home, and promised - 
him five shillings if he would bring the boy quietly 
up to him, without beating him, that he might be 
sure of the truth. For he took for granted, and 
Grimes, too, that Tom had made his way home. 

But no Tom came back to Mr. Grimes that even- 
ing; and he went to the police-office, to tell them 


6o 


"The fVater-Bahies : 


to look out for the boy. But no Tom was heard 
of. As for his having gone over those great fells to 
Vendale, they no more dreamed of that than of his 
having gone to the moon. 

So Mr. Grimes came up to Harthover next day 
with a very sour face; but when he got there, Sir 
John was over the hills and far away; and Mr. Grimes 
had to sit in the outer servants’ hall all day, and 
drink strong ale to wash away his sorrows ; and they 
were washed away, long before Sir John came back. 

For good Sir John had slept very badly that night ; 
and he said to his lady, “ My dear, the boy must 
have got over into the grouse-moors, and lost himself; 
and he lies very heavily on my conscience, poor little 
lad. But I know what I will do.” 

So, at five the next morning up he got, and into 
his bath, and into his shooting-jacket and gaiters, and 
into the stable-yard, like a fine old English gentle- 
man, with a face as red as a rose, and a hand as 
hard as a table, and a back as broad as a bullocks; 
and bade them bring his shooting-pony, and the keeper 
to come oh his pony, and the huntsman, and the first 
whip, and the second whip, and the under-keeper with 
the bloodhound in a leash, — a great dog as tall as 
a calf, of the color of a gravel walk, with mahogany 
ears and nose, and a throat like a church-bell. They 


J Fairy Fate for a Land-Bahy. 6 J 

rook him up to the place where Tom had gone into 
the wood ; and there the hound lifted up his mighty 
voice, and told them all he knew. 

Then he took them to the place where Tom had 
climbed the wall; and they shoved it down, and all 
got through. 

And then the wise dog took them over the moor, 
and over the fells, step by step, very slowly; for the 
scent was a day old, you know, and very light from 
the heat and drought. But that was why cunning 
old Sir John started at five in the morning. 

And at last he came to the top of Lewthwaite Crag, 
and there he bayed, and looked up in their faoes, as 
much as to say, “ I tell you he is gone down here ! ” 

They could hardly believe that Tom would have 
gone so far; and when they looked at that awful cliff, 
they could never believe that he would have dared 
to face it. But if the dog said so, it must be 
true. 

“Heaven forgive us!” said Sir John. “If we 
find him at all, we shall find him lying at the bottom.” 
And he slapped his great hand upon his great thigh, 
and said, — 

“ Who will go down over Lewthwaite Crag, and see 
if that boy is alive? Oh that I were twenty years 
vounger, and I would go down myself!” And so 


62 


T^he iVater-Babies : 


he would have done, as well as any sweep in the 
county. Then he said, — 

“Twenty pounds to the man who brings me that 
boy alive ! ” and, as was his way, what he said he meant. 

Now, among the lot was a little groom-boy, a very 
little groom indeed; and he was the same who had 
ridden up the court, and told Tom to come to the 
Hall; and he said, — 

“Twenty pounds or none, I will go down over 
Lewthwaite Crag, if it’s only for the poor boy’s sake. 
For he was as - civil a spoken little chap as ever 
climbed a flue.” 

So down over Lewthwaite Crag he went: a- very 
smart groom he was at the top, and a very shabby 
one at the bottom ; for he tore his gaiters, and he 
tore his breeches, and he tore his jacket, and he burst 
his braces, and he burst his boots, and he lost his 
hat, and, what was worst of all, he lost his shirt-pin, 
which he prized very much, for it was gold, and he 
had won- ^' in a raffle at Malton, and there was a 
figure af^ Aie top of it of t’ould mare, noble old 
Beeswing herself, as natural as life; so it was a really 
severe loss: but he never saw anything of Tom. 

And all the while Sir John and the rest were riding 
round, full three miles to the right, and back again, 
to get into Vendale, and to the foot of the crag. 


J Fairy ^ale for a Land-Baby. 63 

When they came to the old dame’s school, all the 
children came out to see. And the old dame came 
out too; and when she saw Sir John she courtesied 
very low, for she was a tenant of his. 

“ Well, dame, and how are you?” said Sir John. 

“ Blessings on you as broad as your back, Hart- 
hover,” says she, — she didn’t call him Sir John, but 
only Harthover, for that is the fashion in the North 
country, — “and welcome into Vendale: but you’re 
no hunting the fox this time of year?” 

“ I am hunting, and strange game too,” said he. 

“ Blessings on your heart; and what makes you look 
so sad the morn ? ” 

“ I’m looking for a lost child, a chimney-sweep, that 
is run away.” 

“Oh, Harthover, Harthover,” says she, “ye were 
always a just man and a merciful; and ye’ll no harm 
the poor little lad if I give you tidings of him?” 

“ Not I, not I, dame. I’m afraid we hunted him 
out of the house all on a miserable mistp’- , and the 
hound has brought him to the top of Lcwthwaite 
Crag, and — ” 

Whereat the old dame broke out crying, without 
letting him finish his story. 

“ So he told me the truth after all, poor little dear I 
^Ah, first thoughts are best, and a body’s heart ’ll 


04 


I'he f^'ater-Babies : 


guide them right, if they will but hearken to it/' 
And then she told Sir John all. 

‘‘Bring the dog here, and lay him on,” said Sir 
John, without another word, and he set his teeth 
very hard. 

And the dog opened at once; and went away at 
the back of the cottage, over the road, and over the 
meadow, and through a bit of alder copse; and there, 
upon an alder stump, they saw Tom’s clothes lying. 
And then they knew as much about it all ’as there 
was any need to know. 

And Tom ? 

Ah, now comes the most wonderful part of this 
wond_erful story. Tom, when he woke, for of course 
he woke, — children always wake after they have slept 
exactly as long as is good for them, — found himself 
swimming about in the stream, being about four 
inches, or — that I may be accurate — 3*87902 inches 
long, and having round the parotid region of his 
fauces a set of external gills (I hope you understand 
all the big words) just like those of a sucking eft, 
which he mistook for a lace frill, till he pulled at 
them, found he hurt himself, and made up his .mind 
that they were part of himself, and best left alone. 

In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water- 
baby. 


A Fairy Fale for a. Land-Baby, 65 

water-baby*? You never heard of a water- 
baby. Perhaps not. That is the very reason why 
this story was written. There are a great many 
things in the world which you never heard of ; and 
a great many more which nobody ever heard of; 
and a great many things, too, which nobody will 
ever hear of, at least until the coming of the Cocq- 
cigrues, when man shall be the measure of all things. 
“ But there are no such things as water-babies.” 
How do you know that ? Have you been there 
to see ? And if you had been there to see, and had 
seen none, that would not prove that there were 
none. If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Evers- 
ley Wood — as folks sometimes fear he never will 
— that does not prove that there are no such things 
as foxes. And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods 
in England, so are the waters we know to all the 
waters in the world. And no one has a right to say 
that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no 
water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, 
mind, from not seeing water-babies ; and a thing 
which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do. 

“ But surely if there were water-babies, somebody 
would have caught one at least 

Well. How do you know that somebody has 
not ? 


5 


66 


^he IVater-Bahies : 


“But they would have put it into spirits, or into 
the ‘ Illustrated News,’ or perhaps cut it into two 
halves, poor dear little thing! and sent one to Pro- 
fessor Owen, and one to Professor Huxley, to see 
what they would each say about it.” 

Ah, my dear little man ! that does not follow at 
all, as you will see before the end of the story. 

“ But a water-baby is contrary to nature.” 

Well, but, my dear little man, you must learn to 
talk about such things, when you grow older, in a 
very different way from that. You must not talk 
about “ain’t” and “can’t” when you speak of this 
' great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest 
man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as 
the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child pick- 
ing up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean. 

You must not say that this cannot be, or that that 
is contrary to nature. You do not know what na- 
ture is, or what she can do ; and nobody knows ; 
not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Owen, 
or Professor Sedgwick, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. 
Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any 
other of the great men whom good boys are taught 
to respect. They are very wise men ; and you must 
listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they 
should say, which I am sure they never would, “ That 


J Fatry Tale for a Land-Baby, . 67 

cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,” you must 
wait a little, and see ; for perhaps even they may be 
wrong. It is only children who read Aunt Agitate's 
Arguments, or Cousin Cramchild’s Conversations ; 01 
lads who go to popular lectures, and see a man 
pointing at a few big ugly pictures on the wall, or 
making nasty smells with bottles and squirts, for an 
hour or two, and calling that anatomy or chemistry 
— who talk about “cannot exist,” and “contrary to 
nature.” Wise men are afraid to say that there is 
anything contrary to nature, except what is contrary 
to mathematical truth ; for two and two cannot make 
five, and two straight lines cannot join twice, and a 
part cannot be as great as the whole, and so on (at 
least, so it seems at present); but the wiser men are, 
the less they talk about “ cannot.” That is a very 
rash, dangerous word, that “ cannot ” ; and if people 
use it too often, the Queen of all the Fairies, who 
makes the clouds thunder and the fleas bite, and 
takes just as much trouble about one as about the 
other, is apt to astonish them suddenly by showing 
them, that, though they say she cannot, yet she can, 
and what is more, will, whether they approve or not. 

And therefore it is, that there are dozens and hun- 
dreds of things in the world which we should cer- 
tainly have said were contrary to nature, if we did 


68 


"The IVater-Babics : 


not see them going on under our eyes all day long. 
If people had never seen little seeds grow into grea^ 
plants and trees, of quite different shape from them- 
selves, and these trees again produce fresh seeds, to 
grow into fresh trees, they would have said, “ The 
thing cannot be ; it is contrary to nature.” And 
they would have been quite as right in saying so 
as in saying that most other things cannot be. 

Or suppose, again, that you had come, like M. 
Du Chaillu, a traveller from unknown parts ; and 
that no human being had ever seen or heard of an 
elephant. And suppose that you described him to 
people, and said, “ This is the shape, and plan, and 
anatomy of the beast, and of his feet, and of his 
trunk, and of his grinders, and of his tusks, though 
they are not tusks at all, but two fcre-teeth run mad ; 
and this is the section of his skull, more like a 
mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable 
or unreasonable beast ; and so forth, and so forth ; 
and though the beast (which I assure you I have 
seen and shot) is first cousin to the little hairy coney 
of Scripture, second cousin to a pig, and (I suspect) 
thirteenth or fourteenth cousin to a rabbit, yet he is 
the wisest of all beasts, and can do everything save 
read, write, and cast accounts;” people would surely 
have said, “Nonsense; your elephant is contrary to 


A Fairy Fate for a Land-Baby, 


69 

nature ” ; and have thought you were telling stories, 
— as the French thought of Le Vaillant when he 
came back to Paris and said that he had shot a gi- 
raffe ; and as the king of the Cannibal Islands thought 
of the English sailor, when he said that in his coun- 
try water turned to marble, and rain fell as feathers. 
They would tell you, the more they knew of science, 
‘‘ Your elephant is an impossible monster, contrary to 
the laws of comparative anatomy, as far as yet 
known.” To which you would answer the less the 
more you thought. 

Di d not learned men, too, hold, till within the 
last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an 
impossible monster? And do we not now know 
that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and 
down the world? People call them Pterodactyles . 
but that is only because they are ashamed to call 
them flying dragons, after denying so long that fly- 
ing dragons could exist. And has not a German 
only lately discovered, what is most monstrous of 
all, that some of these flying dragons, lizards though 
they are, had feathers?^ And if that last is not 
contrary to what people mean by nature nowadays, 
one hardly knows what is. 

* This was written before Professor Owen’s Memoir of November 20, 
862, showing that the Archaeopteryx is certainly a bird. 


70 


The IVater-Babies : 


The truth is, that folks’ fancy that such and such 
things cannot be, simply because they have not seen 
them, is worth no more than a savage’s fancy that 
there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive, because 
he never saw one running wild in the forest. Wise 
men know that their business is to examine what is, 
and not to settle what is not. They know that there 
are elephants ; they know that there have been flying 
dragons; and the wiser they are, the less inclined 
they will be to say positively that there are no water- 
babies. 

No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old 
said that everything on earth had its , double in the 
water : and you may see that that is, if not quite true, 
still quite as true as most other theories which you 
are likely to hear for many a day. There are land- 
babies — then, why not water-babies? Are there not 
water-rats, water-flies, water-crickets, water-crabs, water- 
tortoises, water-scorpions, water-tigers and water-hogs, 
water-cats and water-dogs, sea-lions and sea-bears, sea- 
horses and sea-elephants, sea-mice and sea-urchins, sea- 
razors and sea-pens, sea-combs and sea-fans; and of 
plants, are there not water-grass, and water-crowfoot, 
water-milfoil, and so on, without end? 

“But all these things are only nicknames; the water 
things are not really akin to the land-things.” 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby^ yi 

That’s not always true. They are, in millions of 
cases, not only of the same family, but actually the 
same individual creatures. Do not even you know 
that a green drake, and an alder-fiy, and a dragon-fly 
live under water till they change their skins, just as 
Tom changed his^ And if a water-animal can con- 
tinually change into a land-animal, why should not 
a land-animal sometimes change into a water-animal? 
Don’t be put down by any of Cousin Cramchild's 
arguments, but stand up to him like a man, and 
answer him (quite respectfully, of course) thus : — 

If Cousin Cramchild says, that, if there are water- 
babies, they must grow into water-men, ask him how 
he knows that they do not? and then, how he knows 
that they must, any more than the Proteus of the 
Adelsberg caverns grows into a perfect newt ? 

If he says that it is too strange a transformation 
for a land-baby to turn into a water-baby, ask him if 
he ever heard of the transformation of Syllis, or the 
Distomas, or the common jelly-fish, of which M. 
Quatrefages says excellently well — “Who would not 
exclaim that a miracle had come to pass, if he saw 
a reptile come out of the egg dropped by the hen 
in his poultry-yard, and the reptile give birth at once 
to an indefinite number of fishes and birds? Yet 
the history of the jell^^sh is quite as wonderful as 


72 


"The IVater-Babies : 


that would be.” Ask him if he knows about all this 
and if he does not, tell him to go and look for him- 
self, and advise him (very respectfully, of course) tc 
settle no more what strange things cannot happen, 
till he has seen what strange things do happen every 
day. I 

If he says that things cannot degrade, that is, change 
downwards into lower form.s, ask him, who told him 
that water-babies were lower than land-babies? But 
even if 'they were, does he know about the strange 
degradation of the common goose-barnacles, which 
one finds sticking on ships’ bottoms; or the still 
stranger degradation of some cousins of theirs, of 
which one hardly likes to talk, so shocking and ugly 
it is? 

And, lastly, if he says (as he most certainly will) 
that these transformations only take place in the lower 
animals, and not in the higher, say that that seems to 
little boys, and to some grown people, a very strange 
fancy. For if the changes of the lower animals are 
so wonderful, and so difficult to discover, why should 
not there be changes in the higher animals far more 
wonderful, and far more difficult to discover? And 
may not man, the crown and flower of all things, 
undergo some change as much more wonderful than 
all the rest, as the Great Exhibition is more wonoer 


A Fairy ‘Tale for a Land-Baby, 73 

rul than a rabbit-burrow ? Let him answer that. And 
if he says (as he will) that not having seen such a 
ch;.nge in his experience, he is not bound to believe 
it, ask him respectfully where his microscope has beenV 
Does not each of us, in coming into this world, go 
through a transformation just as wonderful as that 
of a sea-egg, or a butterfly ? and does not reason and 
analogy, as well as Scripture, tell us that that trans- 
formation is not the last? and that, though what we 
shall be we know not, yet we are here but as the 
crawling caterpillar, and shall be hereafter as the per- 
fect fly. The old Greeks, heathens as they were, saw 
as much as that two thousand years ago; and I care 
very little for Cousin Cramchild, if he sees even less 
than they. And so forth, and so forth, till he is 
quite cross. And then tell him that if there are no 
water-babies, at least there ought to be; and that, 
at least, he cannot answer. 

And meanwhile, my dear little man, till you know 
a great deal more about nature than Professor Owen 
and Professor Huxley, put together, don’t tell me 
about what cannot be, or fancy that anything is too 
wonderful to be true. “We are fearfully and won- 
derfully made,” said old David : and so we are ; and 
so is everything around us, down to the very deal 
table. Yes; much more fearfully and wonderfully 


/4 "The M^ater-Bahies : 

made already is the table, as it stands now, nothing 
but a piece of dead deal wood, than if, as foxes say 
and geese believe, spirits could make it aance, or 
talk to you by rapping on it. 

Am I in earnest? Oh dear no. Don’t you know 
that this is a fairy-tale, and all fun and pretence; 
and that you are not to believe one word of it, even 
if it is true ? 

But at all events, so it happened to Tom. And, 
therefore, the keeper, and the groom, and Sir John, 
made a great mistake, and were very unhappy (Sir 
John at least) without any reason, when they found 
a black thing in the water, and said it was Tom’s 
body, and that he had been drowned. They were 
utterly mistaken. Tom was quite alive, and cleaner 
and merrier than he ever had been. The fairies had 
washed him, you see, in the swift river, so thoroughly, 
that not only his dirt, but his whole husk and shell 
had been washed quite off him, and the pretty little 
real Tom was washed out of the inside of it, and 
swam away, as a caddis does when its case of stones 
and silk is bored through, and away it goes on its 
back, paddling to the shore, there to split it's skin, 
and fly away as a caperer, on four fawn-colored wings, 
with long legs and horns. They are foolish fellows, 
the caperers. and fly into the candle at night, if you 


7i 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 

leave the door open. We will hope Tom will be 
wiser, now he has got safe out of his sooty old 
shell. 

But good Sir John did not understand all this, 
not being a fellow of the Linnaean Society; and he 
took it into his head that Tom was drowned. When 
they looked into the empty pockets of his shell, and 
found no jewels there, nor money, — nothing but 
three marbles, and a brass button with a string to 
it, — then Sir John did something as like crying as 
ever he did in his life, and blamed himself more 
bitterly than he need have done. So he cried, and 
the groom-boy cried, and the huntsman cried, and 
the dame cried, and the little girl cried, and the 
dairy-maid cried, and the old nurse cried (for it was 
somewhat her fault), and my lady cried, for though 
people have wigs, that is no reason why they should 
not have hearts : but the keeper did not cry, though 
he had been so good-natured to Tom the morning 
before ; for he was so dried up with running after 
poachers, that you could no more get tears out of 
him than milk out of leather: and Grimes did not 
cry, for Sir John gave him ten pounds, and he drank 
it all in a week. Sir John sent, far and wide, to 
find Tom’s father and mother: but he might have 
looked till Doomsday for them, for one was dead, 


The Water-Bahies : 




and the other was in Botany Bay. And the little 
girl would not play with her dolls for a whole week, 
and never forgot poor little Tom. And soon my 
lady put a pretty little tombstone over Tom’s shell 
in the little churchyard in Vendale, where the old 
dalesmen all sleep side by side between the lime- 
stone crags. And the dame decked it with garlands 
every Sunday, till she grew so old that she could 
not stir abroad; then the little children decked it 
for her. And always she sung an old old song, as 
she sat spinning what she called her wedding-dress. 
The children could not understand it, but they liked 
it none the less for that; for it was very sweet, and 
very sad; and that was enough for them. And these 
are the words of it : — 

When ail the world is young, lad, 

And all the trees are green ; 

And every goose a swan, lad, f 

And every lass a queen ; 

Then hey for boot and horse, lad, 

And round the world away : 

A^oung blood must have its course, lad. 

And every dog his day. 

When all the world is old, lad, 

A nd all the trees are brown ; 

And all the sport is stale, lad, 

And all the wheels run down ) 


77 


J Fail) 'Tale for a Land-Baby. 


Creep home and take your place there, 

The spent and maimed among ; 

God grant you find one face there 
You loved when all vvas young. 

Those are the words : but they are only the body 
of it : the soul of the song was the dear old woman’s 
sweet face, and sweet voice, and the sweet old air to 
which she sang; and th^t, alas! one cannot put on 
paper. And at last she grew so stiff and lame, that 
the angel? were forced to carry her; and they helped 
her on with her wedding-dress, and carried her up 
over Harthover Fells, and a long way beyond that 
too; and there was a new schoolmistress in Vendale, 
and we will hope that she was not certificated. 

And all the while Tom was swimming about in 
the river, with a pretty little lace-collar of gills about 
his neck, as lively as a grig, and as clean as a fresh- 
run salmon. 

Now if you don’t like my story, then go to the 
schoolroom and learn your multiplication-table, and 
see if you like that better. Some people, no doubt, 
would do so. So much the better for us, if not foi 
them. It takes all sorts, they say, to make a world. 


'^he IVater-Bakies ' 



CHAPTER III. 


* He prayeth well who loveth well 
Both men and bird and beast ; 

He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small : 

For the dear God who loveth us 
He made and loveth all.” 

Coleridge, 


OM was now quite amphibious. 
You do not know what that 
means? You had better, then, 
ask the nearest Government 
pupil-teacher, who may possi- 
bly answer you smartly enough, 
thus, — 

Jmphihious : — Adjective, derived from two Greek 
words : afjtphi, a fish, and hios, a beast. An animal 
supposed by our ignorant ancestors to be compounded 
of a fish and a beast; which therefore, like the hip- 



J Fairy "Tale for a Land-Bahy, jqj 

popotamus, can’t live on the land, and dies in the 
water.” 

However that may be, Tom was amphibious; and 
what is better still, he was clean. For the first time 
in his life he felt how comfortable it was to have 
nothing on him but himself But he only enjoyed 
it: he did not know it, or think about it; just as 
you enjoy life and health, and yet never think about 
being alive and healthy : and may it be long before 
you have to think about it! 

He did not remember having ever been dirty. In- 
deed, he did not remember any of his old troubles, — 
being tired, or hungry, or beaten, or sent up dark 
chimneys. Since that sweet sleep, he had forgotten 
all about his master, and Harthover Place, and the 
little white girl, and in a word all that had happened 
to him when he lived before ; and what was best of 
all, he had forgotten all the bad words which he had 
learnt from Grimes and the rude boys with whom 
he used to play. 

That is not strange: for you know, when you came 
into this world, and became a land-baby, you remem- 
bered nothing. So why should he, when he became 
a water-baby? 

Then have you lived before ? 

My dear child, who can tell? One can only tell that, 


So 


The IVater-Bahies : 


by remembering something which happened where wc 
lived before; and as we remember nothing, we know 
nothing about it; and no book, and no man, can ever 
tell us certainly. 

There was a wise man once, a very wise man, and a 
very good man, who wrote a poem about the feelings 
which some children have about having lived before; 
and this is what he said: — 

“ Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 

Hath elsewhere had its setting, 

And cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness. 

And not in utter nakedness. 

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home.” 

There, you can know no more than that. But if I 
was you, I would believe that. For then the great 
fairy Science, who is likely to be queen of all the fair- 
ies for many a year to come, can only do you good, 
and never do you harm ; and instead of fancying, with 
some people, that your body makes your soul, as if a 
steam-engine could make its own coke; or, with some 
other people, that your soul has nothing to do with 
your body, but is only stuck into it like a pin into a 
pin-cushion, to fall out with the first shake; — you will 
believe the one true 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby. 8i 


orthodox, 

rational, 

philosophical, 

logical, 

irrefragable, 

nominalistic, 


comfortable. 


inductive, 

deductive, 

seductive, 

productive, 

salutary. 


realistic, 

and on-all-accounts-to-be-received 


doctrine of this wonderful fairy-tale; which is, that 
your soul makes your body, just as a snail makes his 
shell. For the rest, it is enough for us to be sure that 
whether or not we lived before, we shall live again; 
though not, I hope, as poor little heathen Tom did. 
For he went downward into the water: but we, I hope, 
shall go upward to a very different place. 

But Tom was very happy in the water. He had 
been sadly overworked in the land-world ; and so now, 
to make up for that, he had nothing but holidays in 
the water- world for a long, long time to come. He 
had nothing to do now but enjoy himself, and look at 
all the pretty things which are to be seen in the cool 
clear water-world, where the sun is never too hot, and 
the frost is never too cold. 

And what did he live on"? Water-cresses, perhaps; 
or perhaps water-gruel, and water-milk: too many land- 
babies do so likewise. But we do not know what 


6 


82 


"The IVater-Babies : 


one tenth of the water-things eat ; so we are not an- 
swerable for the water-babies. 

Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel water- 
ways, looking at the crickets which ran in and out 
among the stones^ as rabbits do on land; or he climbed 
over the ledges of rock, and saw the sand-pipes hang- 
ing in thousands, with every one of them a pretty little 
head and legs peeping out; or he went into a still 
corner, and watched the caddises eating dead sticks as 
greedily as you would eat plum-pudding, and building 
their houses with silk and glue. Very fanciful ladies 
they were; none of them would keep to the same 
materials for a day. One would begin with some peb- 
bles; then she would stick on a piece of green weed; 
then she found a -shell, and stuck it on too; and the poor 
shell was alive, and did not like at all being taken to 
build houses with: but the caddis did not let him have 
any voice in the matter, being rude and selfish, as vain 
people are apt to be; then she stuck on a piece of 
rotten wood, then a very smart pink stone, and so on, 
till she was patched all over like an Irishman’s coat. 
Then she found a long straw, five times as long as her 
self and said, “Hurrah! my sister has a tail, and I’ll 
have one too”; and she stuck it on her back, and 
marched about with it quite proud; though it was very 
inconvenient indeed. And, at that^ tails became all the 


J Fairy 'Tale for a Land-Bahy. 8i 

fashion among the caddis-baits in that pool, as they 
were at the end of the Long Pond last May, and they 
all toddled about with long straws sticking out behind, 
getting between each other’s legs, and tumbling /over 
each other, and looking so ridiculous, that Tom laughed 
at them till he cried, as we did. But they were quite 
right, you know; for people, must always follow the 
fashion, even if it be spoon-bonnets. 

Then sometimes he came to a deep still reach; and 
there he saw the water-forests. They would have 
looked to you only little weeds: but Tom, you must 
remember, was so little that everything looked a hun- 
dred times as big to him as it does to you, just as 
things do to a minnow, who sees and catches the little 
water-creatures which you can only see in a micros- 
cope. 

And in the water-forest he saw the water-monkeys 
and water-squirrels (they had all six legs, though; every- 
thing almost has six legs in the water, except efts and 
water-babies); and nimbly enough they ran among the 
branches. There were water-flowers there, too, in 
thousands ; and Tom tried to pick them : but as soon 
as he touched them, they drew themselves in and turned 
into knots of jelly; and then Tom saw that they were 
all alive, — bells, and stars, and wheels, and flowers, of 
all beautiful shapes and colors; and all alive and busy 


The IVater-Bahies : 


84 

just as Tom was. So now he found that there was a 
great deal more in the world than he had fancied at 
first sight. 

There was one wonderful little fellow, too, who 
peeped out of the top of a house built of round bricks. 
He had two big wheels, and one little one, all over 
teeth, spinning round and round like the wheels in a 
thrashing-machine; and Tom stood and stared at him, 
to see what he was going to make with his machinery. 
And what do you think he was doing? Brick-making. 
With his two big wheels he swept together all the 
mud which floated in the water: all that was nice in it 
he put into his stomach and ate; and all the mud he 
put into the little wheel on his breast, which really was 
a round hol^ set with teeth; and there he spun it into 
a neat hard round brick; and then he took it and stuck 
it on the top of his house-wall, and set to work to 
make another. Now was not he a clever little fellow? 

Tom thought so: but when he wanted to talk to 
him, the brick-maker was much too busy and proud 
of his work to take notice of him. 

Now you must know that all the things under the 
water talk: only not such a language as ours; but such 
as horses, and dogs, and cows, and birds talk to each 
other; and Tom soon learned to understand them and 
talk to them ; so that he might have had very pleasant 


§5 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby, 

company if he had only been a good boy. But I am 
sorry to say, he was too like some other little boys, 
very fond of hunting and tormenting creatures for m.ere 
sport. Some people say that boys cannot help it ; that 
it is nature, and only a proof that we are all originally 
descended from beasts of prey. But whether it is 
nature or not, little boys can 'help it, and must help it. 
For if they have naughty, low, mischievous tricks in 
their nature, as monkeys have, that is no reason why 
they should give way to those tricks like monkeys, 
who know no better. And therefore they must not 
torment dumb creatures; for if they do, a certain old 
lady who is coming will surefy give them, exactly what 
they deserve. 

But Tom did not know that; and he pecked and 
howked the poor water-things about sadly, till they 
were all afraid of him, and got out of his way, or 
crept into their shells; so he had no one to speak 
to or play with. 

The water-fairies, of course, were very sorry to see 
him so unhappy, and longed to take him, and tell 
him how naughty he was, and teach him to be good, 
and to play and romp with him too: but they had 
been forbidden to do that. Tom had to learn his 
lesson for himself by sound and sharp experience, as 
many another foolish person has to do, though there 


86 


^he iVater-Babies : 


may be many a kind heart yearning over them all 
the while, and longing to teach them what they can 
only teach themselves. 

At last one day he found a caddis, and wanted it 
to peep out of its house: but its house-door was 
shut. ‘He had never seen a caddis with a house-door 
before : so what must he do, the meddlesome little 
fellow, but pull it open, to see what the poor lady 
was doing inside. What a shame! How should you 
like to have any one breaking your bedroom-door 
in, to see how you looked when you were in bed? 
So Tom broke to pieces the door, which was the 
prettiest little grating of silk, stuck all over with 
shining bits of crystal; and when he looked in, the 
caddis poked out her head, and it had turned into 
just the shape of a bird’s. But when Tom spoke 
to her she could not answer ; for her mouth and face 
were tight tied up in a new nightcap of neat pink 
skin. However, if she didn’t answer, all the other 
caddises did ; for they held up their hands and shrieked 
like the cats in Struwelpeter : “ Oh, you nasty horrid 
boy; there you are at it again! And she had just 
laid herself up for a fortnight’s sleep, and then she 
would have come out with such beautiful wings, and 
down about, and laid such lots of eggs : and now 
you have broken her door, and she can’t mend it 


8 / 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 

because her mouth is tied up for a fortnight, and she 
will die. Who sent you here to worry us out of 
our lives?” 

So Tom swam away. He was very much ashamed 
of himself, and felt all the naughtier; as little boys do 
when they have done wrong, and won’t say so. 

Then he came to a pool full of little trout, and 
began tormenting them, and trying to catch them : 
but they slipt through his fingers, and jumped clean 
out of water in their fright. But as Tom chased 
them, he came close to a great dark hover under an 
alder-root, and out floushed a huge old brown trout, 
ten times as big as Jie was, and ran right against 
him, and knocked all the breath out of his body; 
and I don’t know which was the more frightened 
of the two. 

Then he went on sulky and lonely, as he deserved 
to be ; and under a bank he saw a very ugly dirty 
creature sitting, about half as big as himself, which 
had six legs, and a big stomach, and a most ridic- 
ulous head with two great eyes and a face just like 
a donkey’s. 

“Oh,” said Tom, “you are an ugly fellow to be 
sure!” and he began making faces at him; and put 
his nose close to him, and halloed at him, like a ver) 
rude boy.. 


88 


' "The IVater-Babies : 


When, hey presto ! all the thing’s donkey-face came 
off in a moment, and out popped a long arm with 
a pair of pincers at the end of it, and caught Tom 
by the nose. It did not hurt him much; but it held 
him quite tight. 

“ Yah, ah ! Oh, let me go ! ” cried Tom. 

“ Then let me go,” said the creature. “ I want to 
be quiet. I want to split.” 

Tom promised to let him alone, and he let go. 
“ Why do }ou want to split? ” said Tom. 

“ Because my brothers and sisters have all split, 
and turned into beautiful creatures with wings; and 
I want to split too. Don’t speak to me. I am sure 
I shall split. I will split ! ” 

Tom stood still, and watched him. And he swelled 
himself, and puffed, and stretched himself out stiff, 
and at last — crack, puff, bang — he opened all down 
his back, and then up to the top of his head. 

And out of his inside came the most slender, ele^ 
gant, soft creature, as soft and smooth as Tom: but 
very pale and weak, like a little child who has been 
ill a long time in a dark room. It moved its legs 
very feebly; and looked about it half ashamed, like 
a girl when she goes for the first time into a ball- 
room ; and then it began walking slowly up a grass 
stem to the top of the water. 


8c 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 

Tom was so astonished that he never said a word; 
but he stared with all his eyes. And he went up 
to the top of the water too, and peeped out to see 
what would happen. 

And as the creature sat in the warm bright sun, 
a wonderful change came over it. It grew strong 
and firm ; the most lovely colors began to show on 
its body, blue and yellow and black, spots and bars and 
rings; out of its back rose four great wings of bright 
brown gauze; and its eyes grew so large that they 
filled all its head, and shone like ten thousand diamonds. 

“Oh, you beautiful creature!” said Tom; and he 
put out his hand to catch it. 

But the thing whirred up into the air, and hung 
poised on its wings a moment, and then settled down 
again by Tom quite fearless. 

“No!” it said, “you cannot catch me. I am a 
dragon-fly now, the king of all the flies; and I shall 
dance in the sunshine, and hawk over the river, and 
catch gnats, and have a beautiful wife like myself 
I know what I shall do. Hurrah ! ” And he flew 
away into the air, and began catching gnats. 

“Oh! come back, come back,” cried Tom, “you 
beautiful creature ! I have no one to play with, and 
I am so lonely here. If you will but come back I 
will never try to catch you.” 


90 


JVaier-Bahies : 


“ I don’t care whether you do or not,” said the 
dragon-fly; “for you can’t. But when I have had 
my dinner, and looked a little about this pretty place, 
I will come back ; and have a little chat about all 
I have seen in my travels. Why, what a huge tree 
this is ! and what huge leaves on it ! ” 

It was only a big dock: but you know the dragon- 
fly had never seen any but little water-trees ; starwort, 
and milfoil, and water-crowfoot, and such like; so it 
did look very big to him. Besides, he was very 
short-sighted, as all dragon-flies are, and never could 
see a yard before his nose, any more than a great 
many other folks, who are not half as handsome 
as he. 

The dragon-fly did come back, and chatted away 
with Tom. He was a little conceited about his fine 
colors and his large wings; but you know he had been 
a poor dirty ugly creature all his life before, so there 
were great excuses for him. He was very fond of 
talking about all the wonderful things he saw in the 
trees and the meadows; and Tom liked to listen to 
him, for he had forgotten all about them. So in a 
little while they became great friends. 

And Tam very glad to say that Tom learnt such a 
lesson that day, that he did not torment creatures for a 
long time after. And then the caddises grew quite 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. gi 

tame, and used to tell him strange stories about the 
way they built their houses, and changed their skins, 
and turned at last into winged flies; till Tom began 
to long to change his skin, and have wings like them 
some day. 

And the trout and he made it up (for trout very 
soon forget, if they have been frightened and hurt). 
So Tom used to play with them at hare and hounds, 
and great fun they had; and he used to try to leap 
out of the water, head over heels, as they did before a 
shower came oh: but somehow he never could manage 
it. He liked most, though, to see them rising at the 
flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow 
of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the 
water, and the green caterpillars let themselves down 
from the boughs by silk ropes for no reason at all; and 
then changed their foolish minds for no reason at all 
either, and hauled themselves up again into the tree, 
rolling up the rope in a ball between their paws; which 
is a very clever rope-dancer’s trick, and neither Blondin 
nor Leotard could do it : but why they should take so 
much trouble about it no one can tell; for they cannot 
get their living, as Blondin and Leotard do, by trying 
to break their necks on a string. 

And very.qften Tom caught them just as they 
touched the water; "and caught the alder-flies, and the 


92 


T^he IVater-Bahies : 


caperers, and the cock-tailed duns and spinners, yellow, 
and brown, and claret, and gray, and gave them to his 
friends the trout. Perhaps he was not quite kind to 
the flies; but one must do a good turn to one’s friends 
when one can. 

And at last he gave up catching even the flies ; for 
he made acquaintance with one by accident, and found 
him a very merry little fellow. And this was the way 
it happened; and it is all quite true: — 

He was basking at the top of the water one hot day 
in July, catching duns and feeding the “trout, when he 
saw a new sort, a dark gray little fellow with a brown 
head. He was a very little fellow indeed; but he 
made the most of himself, as people ought to do. He 
cocked up his head, and he cocked up his wings, and 
he cocked up his tail, and he cocked up the two whisks 
at his tail-end, and, in short, he looked the cockiest 
little man of all little men. And so he proved to be; 
for instead of getting away, he hopped upon Tom’s 
finger, and sat there as bold as nine tailors; and he 
cried out in the tiniest, shrillest, squeakiest little voice 
you ever heard, — 

“ Much obliged to you, indeed ; but I don’t want it 
yet.” 

“Want what?’ said Tom, quite taken aback b) 
his impudence. 


93 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Bahy. 

“ Your leg, which 'you are kind enough to hold out 
for me to sit on. I must just go and see after my wife 
for a few minutes. Dear me ! what a troublesome 
business a family is! ” (though the idle little rogue did 
nothing at all, but left his poor wife to lay all the eggs 
by herself). “ When I come back, I shall be glad of 
it, if you’ll be so good as to keep it sticking out just 
so ; ” and off he flew. 

Tom thought him a very cool sort of personage; 
and still more so when in five minutes he came back 
and said, — “Ah, you were tired waiting^ Well, your 
other leg will do as well.” 

And he popped himself down on Tom’s knee, and 
began chatting away in his squeaking voice. 

“So you live under the water? It’s a low place. I 
lived there for some time; and was very shabby and 
dirty. But I didn’t choose that that should last. So 
I turned respectable, and came up to the top, and put 
on this gray suit. It’s a very business-like suit, you 
think, don’t you ? ” 

“Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom. 

“Yes, one must be quiet, and neat, and respectable, 
and all that sort of thing for a little, when one becomes 
a familV-man. But Tm tired of it, that’s the truth. 
Pve done quite enough business, I consider, in the last 
week, to last me my life. So I shall put on a ball- 


94 


l^he IVater-Bahies : 


dress, and go out and be a smart man, and see the gay 
world, and have a dance or two. Why shouldn’t one 
be jolly if one can?” 

“And what will become of your wife? ” 

“ Oh ! she is a very plain stupid creature, and that’s 
the truth; and thinks about nothing but eggs. If she 
chooses to come, why she may ; and if not, why I go 
without her; — and here I go.” 

And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and then 
quite white. 

“ Why, you’re ill ! ” said Tom. But he did not 
answer. 

“You’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as he 
stood on his knee, as white as a ghost. 

“No, I a’n’t ! ” answered a little squeaking voice 
over his head. “ This is me up here, in my ball-dress: 
and that’s my skin. Ha, ha! you could not do such a 
trick as that ! ” 

And no more Tom could, nor Houdiny nor Robin, 
nor Frikell, nor all the conjurors in the world. For the 
little rogue had jumped clean out of his own skin, and 
left it standing on Tom’s knee, eyes, wings, legs, tails, 
exactly as if it had been alive. 

“ Ha, ha I ” he said, and he jerked and skipped up 
and down, never stopping an instant, just as if he had 
St. Vitus’s dance. “ A’n’t I a pretty fellow now ? ” 


95 


J Fairy Tiale for a Land-Bahy^ 

And so he was; for his body was white, and his tail 
orange^ and his eyes all the colors of a peacock's tail. 
And wh^t was the oddest of all, the whisks at the end 
of his tail had grown five times as long as they were 
before. 

“Ah!” said he, “now I will see the gay world. 
My living won’t cost me much, for I have no mouth, 
you see, and no inside ; so I can never be hungry, nor 
have the stomach-ache neither.” 

No more he had. He had grown as dry and hard 
and empty as a quill, as such silly shallow-hearted 
fellows deserve to grow. 

But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness, he 
was quite proud of it, as a good many fine gentlemen 
are, and began flirting and flipping up and down, and 
singing — 

“ My wife shall dance, and I shall sing, 

So merrily pass the day ; 

For I hold it one of the wisest things, 

To drive dull care away.” 


And he danced up and down for three days and 
three nights, till he grew so tired that he tumbled 
into the water, and floated down. But what became 
of him Tom never knew, and he himself never 
minded; for Tom heard him singing' to the last, as 
he floated down, — 

“ To drive dull care away-ay-ay ! ” 


96 


'^Ihe IValer-Bahies : 


And if he did not care, why nobody else cared 
either. 

But one day Tom had a new adventure. He was 
sitting on a water-lily leaf, he and his friend the drag- 
on-fly, watching the gnats dance. The dragon-fly 
had eaten as many as he wanted, and was sitting quite 
still and sleepy, for it was very hot and bright. The 
gnats (who did not care the least for their poor broth- 
ers’ deaths) danced a-foot over his head quite happily^ 
and a large black fly settled within an inch of his nose, 
and began washing his own face and combing his hair 
with his paws; but the dragon-fly never stirred, and 
kept on chatting to Tom about the times when he 
lived under the water. 

Suddenly, Tom heard the strangest noise up the 
stream, — cooing, and grunting, and whining, and 
squeaking, as if you had put into a bag two stock- 
doves, nine mice, three guinea-pigs, and a blind puppy, 
and left them there to settle themselves and make 
music. 

He looked up the water, and there he saw a sight 
as strange as the noise : a great ball roiling over and 
over down the stream, seeming one moment of soft 
brown fur, and the next of shining glass ; and yet 
it was not a ball ; for sometimes it broke up and 
streamed away in pieces, and then it joined again ; 


A Fairy Hale for a Land-Bahy, 97 

arid all the while the noise came out of it louder 
and louder. 

Tom asked tb^ dragon-fly what it could be; but, of 
course, with his short sight, he could not even see it, 
though it was not ten yards away. So he took the 
neatest little header into the water, and started off to 
see for himself ; and, when he came near, the ball 
turned out to be four or five beautiful creatures, many 
times larger than Tom, who were swimming about, 
and rolling, and diving, and twisting, and wrestling, 
and cuddling, and kissing, and biting, and scratching, 
in the most charming fashion that ever was seen. And 
if you don’t believe me, you may go to the Zoological 
Gardens (for I am afraid that you won’t see it nearer, 
unless, perhaps, you get up at five in the morning, and 
go down to Cordery’s Moor, and watch by the great 
withy pollard which hangs over the backwater, where 
the otters breed sometimes), and then say, if otters at 
play in the water are not the merriest, lithest, grace- 
fullest creatures you ever saw. 

But when the biggest of them saw Tom, she darted 
out from the rest, and cried in the water-language, 
sharply enough, “Quick, children; here is something 
to eat, indeed ! ” and came at poor Tom, showing 
such a wicked pair of eyes, and such a set of sharp 
teeth in a grinning mouth, that Tom, who had thought 
7 


Ty6(? fVater^Bahies : 


9 « 

her very handsome, said to himself, Handsome is that 
handsome does, and slipt in between the water-lily 
roots as fast as he could, and then turned round and 
made faces at her. 

“Come out,” said the wicked old otter, “or it will 
be worse for you.” 

But -Tom looked at her from between two thick 
roots, and shook them with all his might, making 
horrible faces all the while, just as he used to grin 
through the railings at the old women, when he lived 
before. It was not quite well-bred, no doubt; but 
you know, Tom had not finished his education yet. 

“Come away, children,” said the otter in disgust; 
“it is not worth eating, after all. It is only a nasty 
eft, which nothing eats, not even those vulgar pike 
in the pond.” 

“I am not an eft!” said Tom. “Efts have 
tails.” 

“You are an eft,” said the otter, very positively. 
“I see your two hands quite plain, and I know you 
have a tail.” 

“I tell you I have not,” said Tom. “Look here!'’ 
and he turned his pretty little self quite round; and, 
sure enough, he had no more tail than you. 

The otter might have got out of it by saying that 
Tom was a frog ; but, like a great many other people. 


A Fairy ^ale for a Land-Bahy. gg 

when she had once said a thing, she stood to it, right 
or wrong; so she answered : 

‘‘ I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, and 
not fit food for gentlefolk like me and my children. 
You may stay there till the salmon eat you;” (she knew 
the salmon would not, but she wanted to frighten poor 
Tom). “Ha, ha! they will eat you, and we will eat 
them ! ” and the otter laughed such a wicked cruel 
laugh — as you may hear them do sometimes; and 
the first time that you hear it you will probably think 
it is bogies. 

“ What are salmon ? ” asked Tom. 

“Fish, you eft!- — great fish, nice fish to eat. They 
are the lords of the fish, and we are the lords of the 
salmon;” and she laughed again. “We hunt them 
up and down the pools, and drive them up into a 
corner, the silly things; they are so proud, and bully 
the little trout, and the minnows, till they see us com- 
ing, and then they are so meek all at once ; and we 
catch them-, but we disdain to eat them all ; we just 
bite out their soft throats and suck their sweet juice 
— Oh, so good!” — (and she licked her wicked lips) — 
“and then throw them away, and go and catch an- 
other. They are coming soon, children, coming soon: 
I can smell the rain coming up off the sea ; and then 
hurrah for a fresh, soft salmon, and plenty of eating 
all day long!” . 




100 


"The Water-Bahies : 


And the otter grew so proud that she turned head 
over heel’s twice, and then stood upright half out of 
the water, grinning like a Cheshire cat. 

“And where do they come from ^ ” asked Tom, 
who kept himself very close, for he was considerably 
frightened. 

“ Out of the sea, eft, the great wide sea, where 
they might stay and be safe if they liked. But out 
of the sea the silly things come, into the great river 
down below, and we come up to watch for them ; and 
when they go down again we go down and follow 
them. And there we fish for the bass and the pol- 
lock, and have jolly days along the shore, and toss 
and roll in the breakers, and sleep snug in the warm 
dry crags. Ah, that is a merry life too, children, if it 
were not for those^ horrid men.” 

“What are men?” asked Tom; but somehow he 
seemed to know before he asked. 

“Two-legged things, eft: and, now I come to 
look at you, they are actually something like you, if 
you had not a tail,” (she was determined that Tom 
should have a tail,) “ only a great deal bigger, worse 
luck for us! and they catch the fish with hooks and 
lines, which get into our feet sometimes, and set pots 
along the rocks to catch lobsters. They speared my 
poor dear husband as he went out to find something 


101 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 

fur me to eat. I was laid up among the crags then, 
and we were very low in the world, for the sea was 
so rough that no fish would come in shore. But 
they speared him, poor fellow > and I saw them carry- 
ing him away upon a pole. Ah, he lost his life for 
your sakes, my children, poor dear obedient creature 
that he was.” 

And the otter grew so sentimental (for otters can 
be very sentimental when they choose, like a good 
many people who are both cruel and greedy, and no 
good to anybody at all) that she sailed solemnly away 
down the burn, and Tom saw her no more for that 
time. And lucky it was for her that she did so; 
for no sooner was she gone, than down the bank 
came seven little rough terrier dogs, snuffing and yap- 
ping, and grubbing and splashing, in full cry after 
the otter. Tom hid among the water-lilies till they 
were gone ; for he could not guess that they were 
the water-fairies come to help him. 

- But He could not help thinking of what the otter 
had said about the great river and the broad sea. 
And, as he thought, he longed to go and see them. 
He could not tell why; but the more he thought, 
the more he grew discontented with the narrow little 
stream in which he lived, and all his companions 
there; and wanted to get out into the wide wide 


102 


The Water-Eahies : 


world, and enjoy all the wonderful sights of which 
he was sure it was full. 

And once he set off to go down the stream. But 
the stream was very low; and when he came to the 
shallows he could not keep under water, for there 
was no water left to keep under. So the sun burnt 
his back and made him sick ; and he went back 
again and lay quiet in the pool for a whole week more. 

And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he 
saw a sight. 

He had been very stupid all day, and so had the 
trout; for they would not move an inch to take a 
fly, though there were thousands on the water, but 
lay dozing at the bottom under the shade of the 
stones; and Tom lay dozing too, and was glad to 
cuddle their smooth cool sides, for the water was 
quite warm and unpleasant. 

But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, and 
Tom looked up and saw a blanket of black clouds 
lying right across the valley above his head, resting 
on the crags right and left. He felt not quite fright- 
ened, but very still ; for everything was still. There 
was not a whisper of wind, nor a chirp of a bird 
to be heard ; and next a few great drops of rain fell 
plop into the water, and one hit Tom on the nose 
and made him pop his head down quickly enough. 


J Fairy T!ale for a Land-Bah), 103 

And then the thunder roared, and the lightning 
Hashed, and leapt across Vendale and back again, 
From cloud to cloud, and cliff to cliff, till the very 
rocks in the stream seemed to shake; and Tom looked 
up at it through the water, and thought it the finest 
thing he ever saw in his life. 

But out of the water he dared not put his head; 
for the rain came down by bucketsful, and the hail 
hammered like shot on the stream, and churned it 
into foam ; and soon the stream rose, and rushed 
down, higher and higher, and fouler and fouler, full 
of beetles, and sticks, and straws, and worms, and 
addle-eggs, and wood-lice, and leeches, and odds and 
ends, and omnium-gatherums, and this, that, and the 
other, enough to fill nine museums. 

Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and 
hid behind a rock. But the trout did not; for out 
they rushed from among the stones, and began gob- 
bling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy and 
quarrelsome way, and swimming about with great 
worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging and 
kicking to get them away from each other. 

And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom 
saw a new sight, — all the bottom of the stream alive 
with great eels, turning and twisting along, all down- 
stream and away. They had been hiding for weeks 


104 iVater-Babies , 

past in the cracks of the rocks, and in burrows in the ' 
mud; and Tom had hardly ever seen them, except 
now and then at night : but now they were all out. 
and went hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly 
that he was quite frightened. And as they hurried 
past he could hear them say to each other, “We must 
run, we must run. What a jolly thunderstorm ! 
Down to the sea, down to the sea ! ” 

And then the otter came by with all her brood, 
twining and sweeping along as fast as the eels them- 
selves; and she spied Tom as she came by, and 
said, — 

“Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the 
world. Come along, children; never mind those nasty 
eels : we shall breakfast on salmon to-morrow. Down 
to the sea, down to the sea ! ” 

Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, and 
by the light of it — in the thousandth part of a second 
they were gone again; but he had seen them, he was 
certain of it — three beautiful little white girls, with 
their arms twined round each other’s necks, floating 
down the torrent, as they sang, “ Down to the sea, 
down to the sea ! ” 

“Oh, stay! Wait for me! ’’cried Tom; but they 
were gone: yet he could hear their voices clear and 
sweet through the roar of thunder and water and 


A Fairy F ale for a Land-Baby, 105 

wind, singing as they died away, “Down to the 
sea ! ” 

“Down to the sea?” said Tom; “everything is 
going to the sea; and I will go too. Good-bye, 
trout.” But the trout were so busy gobbling worms 
that they never turned to answer him; so that Tom 
was spared the pain of bidding them farewell. 

And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the 
bright flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed 
rocks, which shone out one moment as clear as day, 
and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers 
under swirling banks, from which great trout rushed 
out on Tom, thinking him to be good to eat, and 
turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them home 
again with a tremendous scolding for daring to meddle 
with a water-baby ; on through narrow strids and 
roaring cataracts, where Tom was deafened and blinded 
for a moment by the rushing waters ; along deep 
reaches, where the white water-lilies tossed and flapped 
beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages; 
under dark bridge-arches, and away and away to the 
sea. And Tom could not stop, and did not care to 
stop : he would see the great world below, and the 
salmon, and the breakers, and the wide, wide sea. 

And when the daylight came, Tom found himself 
out in the salmon river. 


io6 "The IVater-Bahies , 

And what sort of a river was it? Was it like 
an Irish stream, winding through the brown bogs, 
where the wild ducks squatter up from among the 
white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and fro 
crying “ Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep”; and Den 
nis tells you strange stories of the Peishtamore, the 
great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat pools, 
among the old pine-stems, and puts his head out at 
night to snap at the cattle as they come down to 
drink ? — But you must not believe all that Dennis 
tells you, mind ; for if you ask him, — 

“ Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis ? ” 

“ Is it salmon, thin, your honor manes ? Sal- 
mon ? Cartloads it is of thim, thin, an’ ridgmens, 
shouldthering ache other out of wather, av’ ye’d but 
the luck to see thim.” 

Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a 
rise. 

“ But there can’t be a salmon here, Dennis ! and, 
if you’ll but think, if one had come up last tide, 
he’d be gone to the higher pools by now.” 

“ Shure thin, and your honor ’s the thrue fisher- 
man, and understands it all like a book. Why, ye 
spake as if ye’d known the wather a thousand years ! 
As I said, how could there be a fish here at all, 
just now ? ” 


J Fairy "Tale for a Land-Bahy. xo'^j 

" But you said just now they were shouldering 
each other out of water ? ” 

And then Dennis will look up at you with his 
handsome, sly, soft, sleepy, good-natured, untrustable, 
Irish gray eye, and answer with the prettiest smile : 

“ Shure, and didn’t I think your honor would 
like a pleasant answer?” 

So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in 
the habit of giving pleasartt answers ; but, instead of 
being angry with him, you must remember that he 
is a poor Paddy, and knows no better; so you must 
just burst out laughing; and then he will burst out 
laughing too, and slave for you, and trot about after 
you, and show you good sport, if he can, — for he 
is an affectionate fellow, and as fond of sport as you 
are, — and if he can’t, tell you fibs ’ instead, a hun- 
dred an hour; and wonder all the while why poor 
ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scot- 
land, and some other places, where folk have taken 
up a ridiculous fancy that honesty is the best policy. 

Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is 
remarkable chiefly (at least, till this last year) for 
containing no salmon, as they have been all poached 
out by the enlightened peasantry, to prevent the 
Cythrawl Sassenach (which means you, my little 
dear, your kith and kin, and signifies much the 


io8 


T^ke IVater-Bahies : 


same as the Chinese Fan Quei) from coming both* 
ering into Wales, with good tackle, and ready 
n^oney, and civilization, and common honesty, and 
other like things of which the Cymry stand in no 
need whatsoever ? 

Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you 
will see .among the Hampshire water-meadows be- 
fore your hairs are gray, under the wise new fishing- 
laws ? — when Winchester apprentices shall cove- 
nant, as they did three hundred years ago, not to be 
made to eat salmon more than three days a week , 
and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under Salis- 
bury spire as they are in Hollyhole at Christchurch ; 
in the good time coming, when folks shall see that, 
of all Heaven’s gifts of food, the one to be pro- 
tected most carefully is that worthy gentleman Sal- 
mon, who is generous enough to go down to the 
sea weighing five ounces, and to come back next 
year weighing five pounds, without having cost the 
soil or the state one farthing? 

Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur 
Clough drew in his “Bothie”: — 

“ Where over a ledge of granite 

Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended 

Beautiful there for the color derived from green rocks under ; 

Beautiful most of all, where beads of foam uprising 

Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the stillness • . . i 

Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendant birch-boughs.” . , 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 109 

Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and 
fish such a stream as that, you will hardly care, I 
think, whether she be roaring down in full spate, 
like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish 
are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a 
boat-race, or flashing up the:^ cataract like silver ar- 
rows, out of the fiercest of the foam ; or whether 
the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the 
shingle below be as white and dusty as a turnpike 
road, while the salmon huddle together in one dark 
cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their 
time till the rain creeps back again off the sea. 
You will not care much, if you have eyes and 
brains ; for you will lay down your rod contentedly, 
and drink in at your eyes the beauty of that glori- 
ous place ; and listen to the water-ouzel piping on 
the stones, and watch the yellow roes come down 
to drink, and look up at you with their great soft 
trustful eyes, as much as to say, “ You could not 
have the heart to shoot at us ? ” And then, if you 
have sense, you will turn and talk to the great giant 
of a gilly who lies basking on the stone beside you. 
He will tell you no fibs, my little man ; for he is 
a Scotchman, and fears God, and not the priest ; 
and, as you talk with him, you will be surprised 
more and more at his knowledge, his sense, his 


1 1 o T^he PVater-Bahies : 

humor, his courtesy ; and you will find out — unless 
you have found it out before — that a man may 
learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentle- 
man than if he had been brought up in all the 
drawing-rooms in London. 

No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at 
Harthover. It was such a stream as you see in 
dear old Bewick ; Bewick, who was born and bred 
upon them. A full hundred yards broad it was, 
sliding on from broad pool to broad shallow, and 
broad shallow to broad pool, over great fields of 
shingle, under oak and ash coverts, past low cliffs 
of sandstone, past green meadows, and fair parks, 
and a great house of gray stone, and brown moors 
above, and here and there against the sky the smok- 
ing chimney of a colliery. You must look at Be- 
wick to see just what it was like, for he has drawn 
it a hundred times with the care and the love of a 
true north countryman ; and, even if you do not 
care about the salmon river, you ought, like all good 
boys, to know your Bewick. 

At least, so old Sir John used to say; and very 
sensibly he put it too, as he was wont to do, — 

“ If they want to describe a finished young gen- 
tleman in France, I hear, they say of him, ‘ II sail 
ion RahelaisI But if I want to describe one in 


in 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 

England, I say, ‘ He knows his Bewick.’ And I 
think that is the higher compliment.” 

But Tom thought nothing about what the river 
was like. All his fancy was, to get down to the 
wide wide sea. 

And after a while he came to a place where the 
river spread out into broad still shallow reaches, so 
wide that little Tom, as he put his head out of 
the water, could hardly see across. 

And there he stopped. He got a little frightened. 
“ This must be the sea,” he thought. “ What a 
wide place it is. If I go on into it I shall surely 
lose my way, or some strange thing will bite me. 
I will stop here and look out for the otter, or the 
eels, or some one to tell me where I shall go.” 

So he went back a little way, and crept into a 
crack of the rock, just where the river opened out 
into the wide shallows, and watched for some one 
to tell him his way ; but the otter and the eels were 
gone on miles and miles* down the stream. 

There he waited, and slept too, for he was quite 
tired with his night’s journey, and when he woke, 
the stream was clearing to a beautiful amber hue, 
though it was still very high. And after a while he 
saw a sight which made him jump up ; for he knew 
iii a moment it was one of the things which he 
had come to look for. 


I 12 


T^he iVater-Babies : 


Such a fish ! ten times as big as the biggest trout, 
and a hundred times as big as Tom, sculling up 
the stream past him, as easily as Tom had sculled 
down. 

Such a fish ! shining silver from head to tail, 
•and here and there a crimson dot ; with a grand 
hooked nose, and grand curling lip, and a grand 
bright eye, looking round him as proudly as a king, 
and surveying the water right and left as if it all 
belonged to him. Surely he must be the salmon, 
the king of all the fish. 

Tom was so frightened that he longed to creep 
into a hole ; but he need not have been ; for salmon 
are all true gentlemen, and, like true gentlemen, they 
look noble and proud enough, and yet, like true gen- 
tlemen, they never harm or quarrel with any one, 
but go about their own business, and leave rude fel- 
lows to themselves. 

The salmon looked him full in the face, and then 
went on without minding him, with a switch or two 
of his tail which made the stream boil again. And 
in a few minutes came another, and then four or 
five, and so on; and all passed Tom, rushing and 
plunging up the cataract with strong strokes of their 
silver tails, now and then leaping clean out of water 
and up over a rock, shining gloriously for a moment 


J Fairy Tale for a Land-Bahy. 1 1 3 

in the bright sun ; while Tom was so delighted that 
he could have watched them all day long. 

And at last one came up, bigger than all the rest ; 
but he came slowly, and stopped, and looked back, 
and seemed very anxious and busy. And Tom saw 
that he was helping another salmon, an especially 
handsome one, who had not a single spot upon it, 
but was clothed in pure silver from nose to tail. 

“ My dear,” said the great fish to his companion, 
“you really look dreadfully tired, and you must not 
over-exert yourself at first. Do rest yourself behind 
this rock;” and he shoved her gently with. his nose 
to the rock where Tom sat. 

You must know that this was the salmon’s wife. 
For salmon, like other true gentlemen, always choose 
their lady, and love her, and are true to her, and take 
care of her, and work for her, and fight for her, as 
every true gentleman ought ; and are not like vul- 
gar chub and roach and pike, who have no high 
feelings, and take no care of their wives. 

Then he saw Tom, and looked at him very fiercely 
one moment, as if he was going to bite him. 

“ What do you want here ” he said, very fiercely. 

“Oh, don’t hurt me!” cried Tom. “I only want 
to look at you ; you are so handsome.” 

“ Ah ” said the salmon, very stately but very civ- 


114 


I'he iVater-Bahies : 


illy. “ I really beg your pardon ; I see what you 
are, my little dear. I have met one or two creatures 
like you before, and found them very agreeable and 
well-behaved. Indeed, one of them showed me a 
great kindness lately, which I hope to be able to 
repay. I hope we shall not be in your way here. 
As soon as this lady is rested, we shall proceed on 
our journey.” 

What a well-bred old salmon he was ! 

“ So you have seen things like me before ” asked 
Tom. 

“ Several times, my dear. Indeed, it was only last 
night that one at the river’s mouth came and warned 
me and my wife of some new stake-nets which had 
got into the stream, I cannot tell how, since last 
winter, and showed us the way round them in the 
most charmingly obliging way.” 

“ So there are babies in the sea?” cried Tom, and 
clapped his little hands. “ Then I shall have some 
one to play with there ? How delightful ! ” 

“Were there no babies up this stream?” asked 
the lady salmon. 

“ No ; and I grew so lonely. I thought I saw 
three last night : but they were gone in an instant, 
down to the sea. So I went too ; for I had noth- 
ing to play with but caddises and dragon-flies and 
trout.” 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 1 1 3 

“ Ugh ! ” cried the lady, “ what low company ! ” 

“ ]My dear, if he has been in low company, he 
has certainly not learnt their low manners,” said the 
salmon. 

“No, indeed, poor little dear! but how sad for 
him to live among such people as caddises, who have 
actually six legs, the nasty things ! and dragon-flies 
too ! Why they are not even good to eat ; for I tried 
them once, and they are all hard and empty ; and, 
as for trout, every one knows what they are.” 
Whereon she curled up her lip, and looked dread- 
fully scornful, while her husband curled up his too, 
till he looked as proud as Alcibiades. 

“Why do you dislike the trout so ” asked Tom. 

“ My dear, we do not even mention them, if we 
can help it ; for I am sorry to say they are relations 
of ours who do us no credit. A great many years 
ago they were just like us ; but they were so lazy, 
and cowardly, and greedy, that instead of going down 
to the sea every year to see the world and grow 
strong and fat, they choose to stay and poke about 
in the little streams and eat worms and grubs : and 
they are very properly punished for it ; for they have 
e^rown ugly and brown and spotted and small ; and 
are actually so degraded in their tastes, that they will 
eat our children ” 


ii6 


PVater-Bahies : 


“And then they pretend to scrape acquaintance 
with us again,” said the lady. “Why, I have actually 
known one of them propose to a lady salmon, the 
little impudent little creature !r 

“ I should hope,” said the gentleman, “ that there 
are very few ladies of our race who would degrade 
themselves by listening to such a creature for an in- 
stant. If I saw such a thing happen, I should con- 
sider it my duty to put them both to death upon 
the spot.” So the old salmon said, like an old blue- 
blooded hidalgo of Spain ; and what is more, he 
would have done it too. For you must know, no 
enemies are so bitter against each other as those 
who are of the same race ; and a salmon looks on a 
trout as some great folks look on some little folks, — 
as something just too much like himself to be tol- 
erated. 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 


i r 


CHAPTER IV. 


‘ Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; 

Our meddling intellect 
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things 
We murder to dissect. 

“ Enough of science and of art : 

Close up these barren leaves ; 

Come forth, and bring with you a heart 
That watches and receives.” 

Wordsworth. 

O the salmon went up, after Tom 
had warned them of the wicked 
old otter; and Tom went down, 
but slowly and cautiously, coast- 
ing along the shore. He was 
many days about it, for it was 
many miles down to the sea ; 
and perhaps he would never 
have found his way, if the fairies had not guided 



T!he JVater-Bahies : 


118 

him, without his seeing their fair faces, or feeling 
their gentle hands. 

And, as he went, he had a very strange adventure. 
It was a clear still September night, and the moon 
shone so brightly down through the water, that he 
could not sleep, though he shut his eyes as tight as 
possible. So at last he came up to the top, and sat 
upon a little point of rock, and looked up at the 
broad yellow moon, and wondered what she was, and 
thought that she looked at him. And he watched 
the moonlight on the rippling river, and the black 
heads of the firs, and the silver- frosted lawns, and 
listened to the owl’s hoot, and the snipe’s bleat, and 
the fox’s bark, and the otter’s laugh; and smelt the 
soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts of heather 
honey off the grouse-moor far above; and felt very 
happy, though he could not well tell why. You, of 
course, would have been very cold sitting there on a 
September night, without the least bit of clothes on 
your wet back; but Tom was a water-baby, and there- 
fore felt cold no more than a fish. 

Suddenly, he saw a beautiful sight. A bright red 
light moved along the river-side, and threw down into 
the water a long tap-root of flame. Tom, curious 
little rogue that he was, must needs go and see what 
It was; so he swam to the shore, and met the ligM 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby, 1 1 g 

as it stopped over a shallow run at the edge of a 
low rock. 

And there, underneath the light, lay five or six great 
salmon, looking up at the flame with their great 
goggle eyes, and wagging their tails, as if they were 
very much pleased at it. 

Tom came to the top, to look at this wonderful 
light nearer, and made a splash. 

And he heard a voice say, — 

“ There was a fish rose.” 

He did not know what the words meant; but he 
seemed to know the sound of them, and to know the 
voice which spoke them ; and he saw on the bank 
three great two-legged creatures, one of whom held 
the light, flaring and sputtering, and another a long 
pole. And he knew that they were men, and was 
frightened, and crept into a hole in the rock, from 
which he could see what went on. 

The man with the torch bent down over the water, 
and looked earnestly in; and then he said, — 

“Tak that muckle fellow, lad; he’s ower fifteen 
punds; and haud your hand steady.” 

Tom felt that there was some danger coming, and 
longed to warn the foolish salmon, who kept staring 
jp at the light as if he was bewitched. But, before 
ne could make up his mind, down came the pole 


120 


The IVater-Bahies : 


through the water; there was a fearful splash and 
struggle, and Tom saw that the poor salmon was 
speared right through, and was lifted out of the 
water. 

And then, from behind, there sprung on these three 
men three other men ; and there were shouts, and 
blows, and words which Tom recollected to have 
heard before; and he shuddered and turned sick at 
them now, for he felt somehow that they were strange, 
and ugly, and wrong, and horrible. And it all began 
to come back to him. They were men; and they 
were fighting; savage, desperate, up-and-down fight- 
ing, such as Tom had seen too many times before. 

And he stopped his little ears, and longed to swim 
away; and was very glad that he was a water-baby, 
and had nothing to do any more with horrid dirty 
men, with foul clothes on their backs, and foul words 
on their lips: but he dared not .stir out of his hole; 
while the rock shook over his head with the tramp- 
ling and struggling of the keepers and the poachers. 

All of a sudden there was a tremendous splash, 
and a frightful flash, and a hissing, and all wa? 
still. 

For into the water, close to Tom, fell one of the 
men; he who held the light in his hand. Into the 
swift river he sank, and rolled over and over in the 





\ 






121 


A Fairy T’ale for a Land-Bahy. 

current. Tom heard the men above run along, seem- 
ingly looking for him; but he drifted down into the 
deep hole below, and there lay quite still, and they 
could not find him. 

Tom waited a long time, till all was quiet; and 
then he peeped out, and saw the man lying. At last 
he screwed up his courage, and swam down to him, 
“ Perhaps,” he thought, “ the water has made him fall 
asleep, as it did me.” 

Then he went nearer. He grew more and more 
curious, he could not tell why. He must go and 
look at him. He would go very quietly, of course ; 
so he swam round and round him, closer and closer; 
and, as he did not stir, at last he came quite close 
and looked him in the face. 

The moon shone so bright that Tom could see 
every feature; and, as he saw, he recollected, bit by 
bit. It was his old master. Grimes. 

Tom turned tail, and swam away as fast as he 
could. 

“Oh, dear me!” he thought, “now he will turn 
into a water-baby. What a nasty troublesome one 
he will be! And perhaps he ‘will find me out, and 
beat me again.” 

So he went up the river again a little way, and 
lay there the rest of the night under an alder-root; 


122 T!he IVater-Babies : 

but, when morning came, he longed to go down 
again to the big pool, and see whether Mr. Grimes 
had turned into a water-baby yet. 

So he went very carefully, peeping round all the 
rocks, and hiding under all the roots. Mr. Grimes 
lay there still ; he had not turned into a water-baby. 
In the afternoon Tom went back again. He could 
not rest till he had found out what had become of 
Mr. Grimes. But this time Mr. Grimes was gone ; 
and Tom made up his mind that he was turned into 
a water-baby. 

He might have made himself easy, poor little man; 
Mr. Grimes did not turn into a water-baby, or any- 
thing like one at all. But he did not make himself 
easy; and a long time he was fearful lest he should 
meet Grimes suddenly in some deep pool. He could 
not know that the fairies had carried him away, and 
put him, where they put everything which falls into 
the water, exactly where it ought to be. But, do 
you know, what had happened to Mr. Grimes had 
such an effect on him, that he never poached salmon 
any more. And it is quite certain that, when a man 
becomes a confirmed poacher, the only way to cure 
him is to put him under water for twenty-four hours, 
like Grimes. So, when you grow to be a big man, 
do you behave as all honest fellows should ; and never 


123 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 

touch a fish or a head of game which belongs to 
another man without his express leave; and then 
people will call you a gentleman, and treat you like 
one; and perhaps give you good sport: instead of 
hitting you into the river, or calling you a poaching 
snob. 

Then Tom went on down, for he was afraid of 
staying near Grimes; and as he went, all the vale 
looked sad. The red and yellow leaves showered 
down into the river; the flies and beetles were all 
dead and gone; the chill autumn fog lay low upon 
the hills, and sometimes spread itself so thickly on 
the river that he could not see his way. But he 
felt his way instead, following the flow of the stream, 
day after day, past great bridges, past boats and barges, 
past the great town, with its wharfs, and mills, and 
tall smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at anchor 
in the stream ; and now and then he ran against 
their hawsers, and wondered what they were, and 
peeped out, and saw the sailors lounging on board, 
smoking their pipes; and ducked under again, for 
he was terribly afraid of being caught by man and 
turned into a chimney-sweep once more. He did 
not know that the fairies were close to him always, 
shutting the sailors' eyes lest they should see him 
and turning him aside from mill-races, and sewer 


124 


T!he W'ater ‘Babies : 


mouths, and all foul and dangerous things. Pool 
little fellow, it was a dreary journey for him; and 
more than once he longed to be back in Vendale, 
playing with the trout in the bright summer sun. 
But it could not be. What has been once can never 
come over again. And people can be little babies, 
even water-babies, only once in their lives. 

Besides, people who make up their minds to go 
and see the world, as Tom did, must needs find it a 
weary journey. Lucky for them if they do not lose 
heart and stop half-way, instead of going on bravely 
to the end as Tom did. For then they will remain 
neither boys nor men,^ neither fish, flesh, nor good 
red herring; having learnt a great deal too much, 
and yet not enough; and sown their wild oats, with- 
out having the advantage of reaping them. 

But Tom was always a brave, determined little 
English bull-dog, who never knew when he was 
beaten ; and on and on he held, till he saw a long 
way off the red buoy through the fog. And then 
he found, to his surprise, the stream turned round, 
and running up inland. 

It was the tide, of course; but Tom knew nothing 
of the tide. He only knew that in a minute more 
the water, which had been fresh, turned salt all round 
him. And then there came a change over him. He 


125 


J Fairy Hale for a Land-Bahy, 

felt as strong and light and fresh, as if his veins had 
run champagne ; • and gave, he did not know why, 
three skips out of the water, a yard high, and head 
over heels, just as the salmon do when they first touch 
the noble rich salt water, which, as some wise men 
tell us, is the mother of all living things. 

He did not care now for the tide being against 
him. The red buoy was in sight, dancing in the 
open sea; and to the buoy he would go; and to if 
he went. He passed great shoals of bass and mullet, 
leaping and rushing in after the shrimps, but he never 
heeded them, or they him; and once he passed a 
great black shining seal, who was coming in after the 
mullet. The seal put his head and shoulders out of 
water, and stared at him, looking exactly like a fat 
old greasy negro with a gray pate. And Tom, instead 
of being frightened, said, “How d’ye do, sir; what 
a beautiful place the sea is ! ” And the old seal, 
instead of trying to bite him, looked at him with 
his soft sleepy winking eyes, and said, “Good tide 
to you, my little man; are you looking for your 
brothers and sisters ? I passed them all at play out- 
side.” 

“Oh, then,” said Tom, “I shall have playfellows 
at last!” and he swam on to the buoy, and got upon 
it (for he was quite out of breath) and sat there, and 


126 


The hVater-Bahies : 


looked round for water-babies : but there were none 
to be seen. 

The sea-breeze came in freshly with the tide, and 
blew the fog away; and the little waves danced for 
joy around the buoy, and the old buoy danced with 
them. The shadows of the clouds ran races over 
the bright blue bay, and yet never caught each other 
up; and the breakers plunged merrily upon the wide 
white sands, and jumped over the rocks, to see what 
the green fields inside were like, and tumbled down 
and broke themselves all to pieces, and never minded 
it a bit, but mended themselves and jumped up again. 
And the terns hovered over Tom like huge white 
dragon-flies with black heads; and the gulls laughed 
like girls at play; and the sea-pies, with their red 
bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore to shore, and 
whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked and 
looked, and listened; and he would have been very 
happy, if he could only have seen the water-babies. 
Then, when the tide turned, he left the bu'oy, and 
swam round and round in search of them : but in 
vain. Sometimes he thought he heard them laugh- 
ing: but it was only the laughter of the ripples. And 
sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom : 
but it was only white and pink shells. And once 
he was sure he had found one, for he saw two bright 


2 ? 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. i 

eyes peeping out of the sand. So he dived down, 
and began scraping the sand away, and cried, “ Don’t 
hide; I do want some one to play with so much!” 
And out jumped a great turbot, with his ugly eyes 
and mouth all awry, and flopped away along the 
bottom, knocking poor Tom over. And he sat down 
at the bottom of the sea, and cried salt tears from 
sheer disappointment. 

To have come all this way, and faced so many 
dangers, and yet to find no water-babies ! How 
hard! Well, it did seem hard: but people, even 
little babies, cannot have all they want without wait- 
ing for it, and working for it too, my little man, 
as you will find out some day. 

And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long weeks, 
looking out to sea, and wondering when the water- 
babies would come back ; and yet they never came. 

Then he began to ask all the strange things which 
came in out of the sea if they had seen any ; and 
some said "‘Yes,” and some said nothing at all. 

He asked the bass and the pollock ; but they were 
so greedy after the shrimps that they did not care 
to answer him a word. 

Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea- 
snails, floating along each on a sponge full of foam., 
and Tom said, “Where do you come from, you 


128 


"The IVater-Bahies : 


pretty creitures? and have you seen the water-ba« 
hies ? ” 

And the sea-snails answered, “ Whence we come 
we know not; and whither we are going, who can 
tell? We float out our little life jn the mid-ocean, 
with the warm sunshine above our heads, and the 
warm gulf stream below ; and that is enough for us. 
Yes, perhaps we have seen the water-babies. We 
have seen many strange things as we sailed along.’’ 
And they floated away, the happy stupid things, and 
all went ashore upon the sands. 

Then there came in a great lazy sunfish, as big as 
a fat pig cut in half; and he seemed to have been 
cut in half too, and squeezed in a clothes-press till 
he was flat ; but to all his big body and big fins he 
had only a little rabbit’s mouth no bigger than Tom’s; 
and, when Tom questioned him, he answered in a 
little squeaky, feeble voice, — - 

“ I’m sure I don’t know ; I’ve . lost my way. I 
meant to go to the Chesapeake, and I’m afraid I’ve 
got wrong, somehow. Dear me! it was all by fol- 
lowing that pleasant warm water. I’m sure I’ve lost 
my way.” 

And, when Tom asked him again, he could only 
answer, “ I’ve lost my way. Don’t talk to me; I want 
to think.” * 


129 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 

But, like a good many other people, the more he 
tried to think the less he could think; and Tom saw 
him blunclering about all day, till the coast-guardsmen 
saw his big fin above the water, and rowed out, and 
struck a boat-hook into him, and took him away. 
I'hey took him up to the town and showed him foi 
a penny a head, and m.ade a good day’s work of it. 
But of course Tom did not know that. 

Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling 
as they went, — papas, and mammas, and little children, 
— and all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies 
French-polish them every morning ; and they sighed 
so softly as they came by, that Tom took courage 
to speak to them : but all they answered was, “Hush, 
hush, hush ! ” for that was all they had learnt to say. 

And then there came a shoal of basking sharks, 
some of them as long as a boat, and Tom was fright- 
ened at them. But they were very lazy, good-natured 
fellows, not greedy tyrants, like white sharks and blue 
sharks and ground-sharks and hammer-heads, who 
eat men, — or saw-fish and threshers and ice-sharks, who 
hunt the poor old whales. They came and rubbed 
their great sides against the buoy, and lay basking in 
the sun with their back-fins out of water; and winked 
at Tom : but he never could get them to speak. 
They had eaten so many herrings that they were quite 

9 


130 


"Tke /^'ater-Eab/es : 


stupid; and Tom was glad when a collier brig came 
by, and frightened them all away; for they did smell 
most horribly, certainly, and he had to hold his nose 
tight as long as they were there. 

And then there came by a beautiful creature, like 
a ribbon of pure silver, with a sharp head and very 
long teeth; but it seemed very sick and sad. Some- 
times it rolled helpless on its side ; and then dashed 
away, glittering like white fire; and then it lay sick 
again and motionless. 

“ Where do you come from ? ” asked Tom. “ And 
why are you so sick and sad ” 

“ I come from the warm Carolinas, and the sand- 
banks fringed with pines, where the great owl-rays 
leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide. But I 
wandered north and north, upon the treacherous warm 
gulf stream, till I met with the cold icebergs, afloat 
in the mid-ocean. So I got tangled among the 
icebergs, and chilled with their frozen breath. But 
the water-babies helped me from among them, and 
set me free again. And now I am mending every 
day; but I am very sick and sad; and perhaps I shall 
never get home again to play with the owl-rays any 
more.” 

“Oh!” cried Tom. “And you have seen water- 
babies ? Have you seen any near here ? ” 


A Fairy ’Tale for a Land-Baby. 131 

“Yes; they helped me again last night, or I should 
have been eaten by a great black porpoise.” 

How vexatious! The water-babies close to him, 
and yet he could not find one. 

And then he left the buoy, and used to go along 
the sands and round the rocks, and come out in the 
night, — like the forsaken Merman in Mr. Arnold’s 
beautiful poem, which you must learn by heart some 
day, — and sit upon a point of rock, among the shining 
sea-weeds, in the low October tides, and cry and call 
for the water-babies : but he never heard a voice call 
in return. And, at last, with his fretting and crying, 
he grew quite lean and thin. 

But one day among the rocks he found a playfel- 
low. It was not a water-baby, alas! but it was a 
lobster; and a very distinguished lobster he was; for 
he had live barnacles on his claws, which is a great 
mark of distinction in lobsterdom, and no more to 
be bought for money than a good conscience or the 
Victoria Cross. 

Tom had never seen a lobster before; and he was 
mightily taken with this one; for he thought him 
the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had ever 
seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the in- 
genious men, and all the scientific men, and all the fan- 
ciful men, in the world, with all the old German bogy- 


132 The Water-Bahies : 

painters into the bargain, could never invent, if all 
their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, 
and so ridiculous, as a lobster. 

He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged ; 
and Tom delighted in watching him hold on to the 
sea-weed with his knobbed claw, while he cut up 
salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his 
mouth, after smelling at them, like a monkey. And 
always the little barnacles threw out their casting nets 
and swept the water, and came in for their share of 
whatever there was for dinner. 

But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired 
himself off — snap ! like the leap-frogs which you make 
out of a goose’s breast-bone. Certainly he took the 
most wonderful shots, and backwards too. For, if he 
wanted to go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what 
do you think he did*? If he had gone in head fore- 
most, of course he could not have turned round. So 
he used to turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, 
which carry his sixth sense in their tips (and nobody 
knows what that sixth sense is), straight down his back 
to guide him, and twist his eyes back till they almost 
came out of their sockets, and then made ready, pre- 
sent, fire, snap! — and away he went, pop into the 
hole; and peeped out and twiddled his whiskers, as 
much as to say, “You couldn’t do that.” 


^33 


A Fairy ^ale for a LanABaby. 

Tom asked him about water-babies. “Yes,” he 
said. He had seen them often. But he did not think 
much of them. They were meddlesome little creat- 
ures, that went about helping fish and shells which got 
into scrapes. Well, for his part, he should be ashamed 
to be helped by little soft creatures that had not even a 
shell on their backs. He had lived quite long enough 
in the world to take care of himself 

He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not 
very civil to Tom; and you will hear how he had to 
alter his mind before he was done, as conceited people 
generally have. But he was so funny, and Tom so 
lonely, that he could not quarrel with him ; and they 
used to sit in holes in the rocks, and chat for hours. 

And about this time there happened to Tom a very 
strange and important adventure — so important, in- 
deed, that ‘he was very near never finding the water- 
babies at all; and I am sure you would have been 
sorry for that. 

I hope that you have not forgotten the little white 
lady all this while. At least, here she comes, looking 
like a clean white good little darling, as she always 
was, and always will be. For it befell in the pleasant 
short December davs, when the wind always blows 
from the southwest, till Old Father Christmas comes 
and spreads the great white table-cloth, ready for little 


^34 


The JVater-Bahies : 


boys and girls to give the birds their Christmas dinner 
of crumbs, — it befell (to go on) in the pleasant De- 
cember days, that Sir John was so busy hunting that 
nobody at home could get a word out of him. Four 
days a week he hunted, and very good sport he had ; 
and the other two he went to the bench and the board 
of guardians, and very good justice he did^ and, when 
he got home in time, he dined at five; for he hated 
this absurd new fashion of dining at eight in the 
hunting-season, which forces a man to make interest 
with the footman for cold beef and beer as soon as 
he comes in, and so spoil his appetite, and then sleep 
in an arm-chair in his bedroom, all stiff and tired, for 
two or three hours b'efore he can get his dinner like 
a gentleman. And do you be like Sir John, my dear 
little man, when you are your own master; and, if 
you want either to read hard or ride hard, stick to the 
good old Cambridge hours of breakfast at eight and 
dinner at five, by which you may get two days’ work 
out of one. But, of course, if you find a fox at three 
in the afternoon and run him till dark, and leave off 
twenty miles from home, why you must wait for your 
dinner till you can get it, as better men than you have 
done. Only see that, if you go hungry, your horse 
does not; but give him his warm gruel and beer, and 
take him gently home, remembering that good horses 
don’t g-row on the hed^e like blackberries. 


>35 


^ Fairy Fale for a Land^Bahy, 

It befell (to go on a second time) that Sir John, 
hunting all day and dining at five, fell asleep every 
evening, and snored so terribly that all the windows *in 
Harthover shook, and the soot fell down the chimneys. 
Whereon My Lady, being no more able to get con- 
versation out of him than a song out of a dead 
/ nightingale, determined to go off and leave him, and 
the doctor, and Captain Swinger the agent, to snore 
in concert every evening to their hearts’ content. So 
she started for the sea-side with all the children, in 
order to put herself and thehi into condition by mild 
applications of iodine. She might as well have stayed 
at home and used Parry’s liquid horse-blister, for there 
was plenty of it in the stables; and then she would 
have saved her money, and saved the chance, also, 
of making all the children ill instead of well (as hun- 
dreds are made) by taking them to some nasty-smell- 
ing undrained lodging, and then wondering how they 
caught scarlatina and diphtheria: but people won’t 
be wise enough to understand that till they are all 
dead of bad smells, and then it will be too late; 
besides, you see, Sir John did certainly snore very loud. 

But where she went to nobody must know, for 
fear young ladies should begin to fancy thttt there 
are water-babies there ; and so hunt and hawk after 
them, (besides raising the price of lodgings,) and keep 


^he Haler-Babies: 


136 

them in aquariums, as the ladies at Pompeii (as you 
may see by the paintings) used to keep Cupids in 
cages. But nobody ever heard that they starved the 
Cupids, or let them die of dirt and neglect, as English 
young ladies do by the poor sea-beasts. So nobody 
must know where My Lady went. Letting water- 
babies die is as bad as taking singing-birds’ eggs; for, 
though there are thousands, ay, millions, of both of 
them in the world, yet there is not one too many. 

Now it befell that, on the very shore, and over the 
very rocks, where Tom was sitting with his friend the 
lobster, there walked one day the little white lady, 
Ellie herself, and with her a very wise man indeed — 
Professor Ptthmllnsprts. 

His mother was a Dutchwoman, and therefore he 
was born at Curasao (of course you have learnt your 
geography, and therefore know why); and his father 
a Pole, and therefore he was brought up at Petro- 
paulowski (of course you have learnt your modern 
politics, and therefore know why): 'but for all that 
he was as thorough an Englishman as ever coveted his 
neighbor’s goods. And his name, as I said, was Pro- 
fessor Ptthmllnsprts, which is a very ancient and noble 
Polish name. 

He was, as I said, a very great naturalist, and chief 
professor of Necrobioneopalseonthydrochthonanthropo' 


137 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 

pithekology in the new university which the king of 
the Cannibal Islands had founded ; and, being a mem- 
ber of the Acclimatization Society, he had come here 
to collect all the nasty things which *he could find 
on the coast of England, and turn them loose round 
the Cannibal Islands, because they had not nasty things 
enough there to eat what they left. 

But he was a very worthy kind good-natured little 
old gentleinan ; and very fond of children (for he 
was not the least a cannibal himself) ; and very good 
to all the world as long as it was good to him. Only 
one fault he had, which cock-robins have likewise, 
as you may see if you will look out of the nursery 
window — that, when any one else found a curious 
worm, he would hop round them, and peck them, and 
set up his tail, and bristle up his feathers, just as a 
cock-robin would ; and declare that he found the worm 
first ; and that it was his worm : and, if not, that then 
it was not a worm at all. 

He had met Sir, John at Scarborough, or Fleetwood, 
or somewhere or other (if you don’t care where, 
nobody else does), and had made acquaintance with 
him, and become very fond of his children. Now, 
Sir John knew nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and 
cared less, provided the fishmonger sent him good 
fish for dinner; and My Lady knew as little; but 


^he Water-Bahies : 


138 

she thought it proper that the children should know 
something. For in the stupid old times, you must 
understand, children were taught to know one thing, 
and to know it well : but in these enlightened new' 
times they are taught to know a little about everything, 
and to know it all ill ; which is a great deal pleas- 
anter and easier, and therefore quite right. 

So Elbe and he were walkings on the rocks, and he 
was showing her about one in ten thousand of all 
the beautiful and curious things which are to be seen 
there. But little Elbe was not satisfied with them at 
all. She liked much better to play with live children, 
or even with dolls, which she could pretend were alive ; 
and at last she said honestly, “ I don’t care about all 
these things, because they can’t play with me, or talk 
to me. If there were little children now in the water, 
as there used to be, and I could see them, I should 
like that.” 

“ Children in the water, you strange little duck ” 
said the professor. 

“Yes,” said Elbe. “I know there used to be chil- 
dren in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen. 
I saw' them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful 
lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies 
flying round her, and one sitting in her lap ; and the 
mermaids swimming and playing, and the mermer 


A Fairy ale for a Land-Baby, 135 

trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called ‘The 
Triumph of Galatea’; and there is a burning moun- 
tain in the picture behind. It hangs on the great 
staircase, and I have looked at it ever" since I was a 
baby, and dreamt about it a hundred times; and it 
is so beautiful, that it must be true,” 

Ah, you dear little Ellie, fresh out of heaven ! when 
will people understand that one of the deepest and 
wisest speeches which can come out of a human 
mouth is that — “It is so beautiful that it must be 
true.” 

Not till they give up believing that Mr. John 
Locke (good man and honest though he was) was 
the wisest man that ever lived on earth : and recollect 
that a wiser man than he lived long before him; and 
that his name was Plato the son of Ariston. 

But the professor was not in the least of that 
opinion. He held very strange theories about a good 
many things. He had even got up once at the British 
Association, and declared that apes had hippopotamus 
majors in their brains just as men have. Which was 
a shocking thing to say; for, if it were so, what would 
become of the faith, hope, and charity of immortal 
millions? You may think that there are other more 
important differences between you and an ape, such 
as being able to speak, and make machines, and know 


140 


Tike IVater-Bahies : 


right from wrong, and say your prayers, and othei 
little matters of that kind : but that is a child’s fancy, 
my dear. Nothing is to be depended on but the 
great hippopotamus test. If you have a hippopota- 
mus major in your brain, you are no ape, though 
you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish 
than the apes of all aperies. But, if a hippopotamus 
major is ever discovered in one single ape’s brain, 
nothing will save your greaf-great-great-great-great- 
great-great-great-great-great-great-greater-greatest-grand- 
mother from having been an ape too. No, my dear 
little man; always remember that the one true, cer- 
tain, final, and all-important difference between you 
and an ape is, that you have a hippopotamus major 
in your brain, and it has none; and that, therefore, 
to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and 
dangerous thing, at which every one will be very 
much shocked, as we may suppose they were at the 
professor. — Though really, after all, it don’t much 
matter: because — as Lord Dundreary and others 
would put it — nobody but men have hippopota- 
muses in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was 
discovered in an ape’s brain, why it would not be 
one, you know, but something else. 

But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even 
further than that; for he had read at the British Asso- 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 141 

ciation at Melbourne, Australia, in the year 1999, a 
paper, who assured every one who found himself the 
better or wiser for the news, that there were not, 
never had been, and could not be, ahy rational or 
half-rational beings except men, anywhere, anywhen, 
or anyhow ; that nymphs, satyrs, fauns, inui, dwarfs, 
trolls, elves, gnomes, fairies, brownies, nixes, wilis, 
kobolds, leprechaunes, cluricaunes, banshees, will-o’- 
the-wisps, follets, lutins, magots, goblins, afrits, marids, 
jinns, ghouls, peris, deevs, angels, archangels, imps, 
bogies, or worse, were nothing at all, and pure bosh 
and wind. And he had to get up very early in the 
morning to prove that, and to eat his breakfast over- 
night: but he did it, at least to his own satisfaction. 
Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever 
divine was he, called him a regular Sadducee; and 
probably he was quite right. Whereon the professor, 
in return, called him a regular Pharisee; and prob- 
ably he was quite right too. But they did not quarrel 
in the least; for, when men are men of the world, 
hard words run off them like water off a duck’s back. 
So the ’professor and the divine met at dinner that 
evening, and sat together on the sofa afterwards for 
an hour, and talked over the state of female labor on 
the antarctic continent (for nobody talks shop after 
his claret), and each vowed that the other was the 


142 


The JVater-Bahies : 


best company he ever met in his life. What an ad- 
vantage it is to be men of the world ! 

From all which you may guess that the professor 
was not the least of little Elbe's opinion. So he gave 
her a succinct compendium of his famous paper at the 
British Association, in a form suited for the youthful 
mind. But, as we have gone over his arguments 
against water-babies once already, which is once too 
often, we will not repeat them here. 

Now little Elbe was, I suppose, a stupid little girl; 
for, instead of being convinced by Professor Ptthmlln- 
sprts’ arguments, she only asked the same question 
over again. 

But why are there not water-babies 
I trust and hope that it was because the professor 
trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp 
mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he an- 
swered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific 
man, and therefore ought to have known that he 
couldn’t know ; and that he was a logician, and there- 
fore ought to have known that he could not prove 
an universal negative ; — I say, I trust and hope it was 
because the mussel hurt his corn, that the professor 
answered quite sharply, — 

“ Because there a’n’t.” 

Which was not even good English, my dear little 


J Fairy "Fale for a Land-Fahy, 143 

boy; for, as you must know from Aunt Agitate’s 
Arguments, the professor ought to have said, if he was 
so angry as to say anything of the kind, — Because 
there are not : or are none : or are none of them : or, 
(if he had been reading Aunt Agitate too,) because 
they do not exist. 

And he groped with his net under the weeds so 
violently, that, as it befell, he caught poor little Tom. 

He felt the net very heavy; and lifted it out quickly, 
with Tom all entangled in the meshes. 

“ Dear me ! ” he cried. “ What a large pink Holo- 
thurian; with hands, too! It must be connected with 
Synapta.” 

And he took him out. 

“It has actually eyes ! ” he cried. “Why, it must 
be a Cephalopod ! This is most extraordinary ! ” 

“No, I a’n’t ! ” cried Tom, as loud as he could ; for 
he did not like to be called bad names. 

. “ It is a water-baby I ” cried El lie ; and of course 
it was. 

“Water-fiddlesticks, my dear! ’’said the professor; 
and he turned away sharply. 

There was no denying it. It was a water-baby 
and he had said a moment ago that there were none. 
What was he to do 

He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom 


T^ke Water Babies : 


144 

home in a bucket. He would not have put him in 
spirits. Of course not. He would have kept him 
alive, and petted him (for he was a very kind old 
gentleman), and written a book about him, and given 
him two long names, of which the first would have 
said a little about Tom, and the second all about 
himself; for of course he would have called him 
Hydrotecnon Ptthmllnsprtsianum, or some other long 
name like that; for they are forced to call everything 
by long names now, because they have used up all 
the short ones, ever since they took to making nine 
species out of one. But — what would all the learned 
men say to him after his speech at the British Asso- 
ciation ? And what would Ellie say, after what he 
had just told her 

There was a wise old heathen once, who said, 
“Maxima debetur pueris reverentia’' — The greatest 
reverence is due to children ; that is, that grown people 
should never say or do anything wrong before children, 
lest they should set them a bad example. — Cousin 
Cramchild says it means, “ The greatest respectfulness 
is expected from litth boys.” But he was raised in 
a country where little boys are not expected to be 
respectful, because all of them are as good as the 
President; — well, every one knows his own concerns 
best; so perhaps they are. But poor Cousin Cram 


145 


J Fairy Fale^for a LanFBaby, 

child, to do him justice, not being of that opinion, 
and having a moral mission, and being no scholar to 
speak of, and hard up for an authority — why, it was 
a very great temptation for him. But*some people, 
and I am afraid the professor was one of them, in- 
terpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left- 
handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-befbre fashion, 
than even Cousin Cramchild ; for they make it mean, 
that you must show your respect for children by never 
confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you 
know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence 
in their elders. 

Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, “Yes, my 
darling, it is a water-baby, and a very wonderful thing 
it is; and it shows how little I know of the wonders 
of nature, in spite of forty years’ honest labor. I 
was just telling you that there could be no such creat- 
ures ; and, behold ! here is one come to confound 
my conceit, and show me that Nature can do, and 
has done, beyond all that man’s poor fancy can im- 
agine. So, let us thank the Maker, and Inspiref, and 
Lord of Nature for all His wonderful and glorious 
works, and try and find out something about this 
one”: — I think that, if the professor had said that, 
little Ellie would have believed him more firmly, and 
respected him more deeply, and loved him better, than 

lO 


Hke JVater-Bahies : 


.46 

ever she had done before. But he was of a different 
opinion. He hesitated a moment. He longed to 
keep Tom, and yet he half wished he never had caught 
him; and, at last, he quite longed to get rid of him. 
So he turned away, and poked Tom with his finger, for 
want of anything better to do ; and said carelessly, 
“My dear little maid, you must have dreamt of water- 
babies last night, your head is so full of them.” 

Now Tom had been in the most horrible and un- 
speakable fright all the while; and had kept as quiet 
as he could, though he was called a Holothurian and 
a^Cephalopod ; for it was fixed in his little head that 
if a man with clothes on caught him, he might put 
clothes on him too, and make a dirty black chimney- 
sweep of him again. But when the professor poked 
him, it was more than he could bear; and, between 
fright and rage, he turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse 
in a corner, and bit the professor’s finger fill it bled. 

“ Oh ! ah ! yah ! ” cried he ; and glad of an excuse 
to be rid of Tom, dropped him on to the sea-weed, 
and thence he dived into the water, and was gone in a 
moment. 

“ But it was a water-baby, and I heard it speak ! 
cried Elbe. “Ah, it is gone!” And she jumped 
down off the rock to try and catch Tom before b-? 
slipt into the sea. 


H7 


A Fairy 'Fale for a Land-Baby, 

Too late! and what was worse, as she sprang down, 
she slipped, and feel some six feet, with her head on 
a sharp rock, and lay quite still. 

The professor picked her up, and tried to waken 
her, and called to her, and cried over her, for he loved 
her very much : but she would not waken at all. So 
he took her up in his arms, and carried her to her 
governess, and they all went home; and little Elbe 
was put to bed, and lay there quite still; only now 
and then she woke up, and called out about the water- 
baby ; but no one knew what she meant, and the pro- 
fessor did not tell, for he was ashamed to tell. 

And, after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies 
came flying in at the window, and brought her such 
a pretty pair of wings, that she could not help putting 
them on; and she flew with them out of the window, 
and over the land, and over the sea, and up through 
the clouds, and nobody heard or saw anything of her 
for a very long while. 

And this is why they say that no One has ever yet 
seen a water-baby. For my part, I believe that the 
naturalists get dozens of them when they are out 
dredging : but they say nothing about them, and throw 
them overboard again, for fear of spoiling their theories. 
But, you see the professor was found out, as every 
one is in due time. A very terrible old fairy found 


The Water ‘Bahies : 


148 

the professor out ; she felt his bumps, and cast his 
nativity, and took the lunars of him carefully inside 
and out; and so she knew what he would do as well 
as if she had seen it in a print book, as they say in 
the dear old west country; and he did it; and so he 
was found out beforehand, as everybody always is; 
and the old fairy will find out the naturalists some 
day, and put them in the “ Times”; and then on whose 
side will the laugh be? 

So the old fairy took him in hand very severely 
there and then. But she says she is always most severe 
with the best people, because there is most chance 
of curing them, and therefore they are the patients 
who pay her best ; for she has to work on the same 
salary as the Emperor of China’s physicians (it is a 
pity that all do not), no cure, no pay. 

So she took the poor professor in hand ; and because 
he was not content with things as they are, she filled 
his head with things as they are not, to try if he would 
like them better; and because he did not choose to 
believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made him 
believe in worse things than water-babies — in uni- 
corns, fire-drakes, manticoras, basilisks, amphisboenas, 
griffins, phoenixes, rocs, ores, dog-headed men, three- 
headed dogs, three-bodied geryons, and other pleasant 
creatures, which folks think never existed yet, and 


A Fairy "Fale for a Land-Baby, 1^9 

which folks hope never will exist, though they know 
nothing about the matter, and never will ; and these 
creatures so upset, terrified, flustered, aggravated, con- 
fused, astounded, horrified, and totally flabbergasted 
the poor professor, that the doctors said that he was 
out of his wits for three months; and perhaps they 
were right, as they are now and then. 

So all the doctors in the county were called in, to 
make a report on his case; and of course every one 
of them flatly contradicted the other: else wt|^t use 
is there in being men of science? But at last the 
majority agreed on a report, in the true medical lan- 
guage, one half bad Latin, the other half worse Greek, 
and the rest what might have been English, if they 
had only learnt to write it. And this is the begin- 
ning thereof — 

“ The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peri- 
tomic diacellurite in the encephalo digital region of 
the distinguished individual of whose symptomatic 
phsenomena we had the melancholy honor (subse- 
quently to a preliminary diagnostic inspection) of mak- 
ing an inspectorial diagnosis, presenting the interex- 
clusively quadrilateral and antinomian diathesis known 
as Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, we proceeded — ” 


150 


"The fi^ater-Bahies : 


But what they proceeded to do my lady never 
knew, for she was so frightened at the long words that 
she ran for her life, and locked herself into her bed- 
room, for fear of being squashed by the words and 
strangled by the sentence. A boa-constrictor, she 
said, was bad company enough : but what was a boa- 
constrictor made of paving-stones? 

“It was quite shocking! What can they think is 
the matter with him ? ” said she to the old nurse. 

“That his wit ’s just addled; may be wi' unbelief 
and heathenry,” quoth she. 

“ Then why can’t they say so ? ” 

And the heaven, and the sea, and the rocks, and the 
vales reechoed — “ Why indeed ? ” But the doctors 
never heard them. 

So she made Sir John write to the “ Times” to com- 
mand the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time 
being to put a tax on long words: — 

A light tax on words over three syllables, which are 
necessary evils, like rats : but, like them, must be kept 
down judiciously. 

A heavy tax on words over four syllables, as heter- 
odoxy, spontaneity, spiritualism, spuriosity, &c*. 

And on words over five syllables (of which I hope 
no one will wish to see any examples), a totally pro^ 
hibitory tax. 


J Fairy "F ale for a Land^Bahy. 151 

And a similar prohibitory tax on words derived 
from three or more languages at once ; words derived 
from two languages having become so common, that 
there was no more hope of rooting out 'them than of 
rooting out peth-winds. 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a scholar 
and a man of sense, jumped at the notion ; for he saw 
in it the one and only plan for abolishing Schedule 
D: but when he brought in his bill, most of the Irish 
members, and (I am sorry to say) some of the Scotch 
likewise, opposed it most strongly, on the ground that 
in a free country no man was bound either to under- 
stand himself or to let others understand him. So the 
bill fell through on the first reading; and the Chan- 
cellor, being a philosopher, comforted himself with 
the thought, that it was not the first time that a 
woman had hit off a grand idea, and the men turned 
up their stupid noses thereat. 

Now the doctors had it all their own way; and to 
work they went in earnest, and they gave the poor 
Professor divers and sundry medicines, as prescribed 
by the ancients and moderns, from Hippocrates to 
Feuchtersleben, as below, viz : — 
l. Hellebore, to wit — 

Hellebore of .^ta. 

Hellebore of Galatia. 


152 


"Tke JVater-Bahies : 


Hellebore of- Sicily. 

And all other Hellebores, after the method of the 
Helleborizing Helleborists of the Helleboric era. 
But that would not do. Bumpsterhausen’s blue 
follicles would not stir an inch out of his en- 
cephalo digital region. 

2 Trying to find out what was the matter with him; 
after the method of — 

Hippocrates. 

Aretasus. 

Celsus. 

Coelius Aurelianus, 

And Galen : but they found that a great deal too 
much trouble, as most people have since ; and so 
had recourse to — 

3. Borage. 

Cauteries. 

Boring a hole in his head to let out fumes, which 
(says Gordonius) “will, without doubt, do much 
good.” But it didn’t. 

Bezoar stone. 

Diamargaritum. 

A ram’s brain boiled in spice. 

Oil of wormwood. 

Water of Nile. 

Capers. 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 1 53 

Good wine (but there was none to be got). 

The water of a smith’s forge. 

Hops. 

Ambergris. 

Mandrake pillows. 

Dormouse’ fat. 

Hares’ ears. 

Starvation. 

Camphor. 

Salts and Senna. 

Musk. 

Opium. 

Strait- waistcoats. 

Bully ings. 

Bumpings. 

Blisterings. 

Bleedings. 

Bucketings with cold water. 

Knockings down. 

Kneeling on his chest till they broke it in, &c. &c. ; 
after the mediseval or monkish method : but that 
would not do. Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles 
stuck there still. 

Then — 
i). Coaxing. 

Kissing. 


54 


^he iVater-Babies : 


Champagne and turtle. 

Red herrings and soda water. 

Good advice. 

Gardening. 

Croquet. 

Musical soirees. 

Aunt Sally, 

Mild tobacco. 

The “ Saturday Review.” 

A carriage with outriders, &c., &c., after the modern 
method. But that would not do. 

And if he had but been a convict lunatic, and had 
shot at the Queen, killed all his creditors to avoid 
paying them, or indulged in any other little 
amiable eccentricity of that kind, they would 
have given him, in addition, — 

The healthiest situation in England, on Easthamp- 
stead Plain. 

Free run of Windsor Forest. 

The “Times” every morning. 

A double-barrelled gun and pointers, and leave to 
shoot three Wellington College boys a week (not 
more) in case black game were scarce. 

But as he was neither mad enough nor bad enough 
to be allowed such luxuries, they grew desperate, 
and fell into bad ways, viz : — 


155 


A Fairy T!ale for a Land-Bahy, 

5. Suffumigations of sulphur. 

Heerwiggius his “ Incomparable drink for mad- 
men ’’ : only they could not find out what it was. 

Suffumigation of the liver of the fish , only 

they had forgotten its name, so Dr. Gray could 
not well procure them a specimen. 

Metallic tractors. 

Holloway’s Ointment. 

Electro-biology. 

Valentine Greatrakes his Stroking Cure. 

Spirit-rapping. 

Holloway’s Pills. 

Table-turning. 

Morrison’s Pills. 

Homoeopathy. 

Parr’s Life Pills. 

Mesmerism. 

Pure Bosh. 

Exorcisms, for which they read Malleus Malefica- 
rum, Nideri Formicarium, Delrio, Wierus, &c., 
but could not get one that mentioned water- 
babies. 

Hydropathy. 

Madame Rachel’s Elixir of Youth. 

The Poughkeepsie Seer his Prophecies. 

The distilled liquor of addle eggs. 


lj;6 T^he IVater-Babies : 

Pyropathy, as successfully employed by the old 
inquisitors to cure the malady of thought, and 
now by the Persian Mollahs to cure that of rheu- 
matism. 

Geopathy, or burying him. 

Atmopathy, or steaming him. 

Sympathy, after the method of Basil Valentine his 
Triumph of Antimony, and Kenelm Digby his 
Weapon-salve, which some call a hair of the dog 
that bit him. 

Hermopathy, or pouring mercury down his throat, 
to move the animal spirits. 

Meteoropathy, or going up to the moon to look for 
his lost wits, as Ruggiero did for Orlando Fu- 
rioso’s : only, having no hippogriff, they were 
forced to use a balloon; and, falling into the 
North Sea, were picked up by a Yarmouth 
herring-boat, and came home much the wiser, 
and all over scales. 

Antipathy, or using him like ‘‘ a man and a brother.’' 

Apathy, or doing nothing at all. 

With all other ipathies and opathies which Noodle 
has invented, and Foodie tried, since, black-fellows 
chipped flints at Abbeville, — which is a consider- 
able time ago, to judge by the Great Exhibition. 

But nothing would do; for he screamed and cried 


157 


A Fairy Aale for a Land-Bahy. 

all day for a water-baby, to come and drive away the 
monsters; and of course they did not try to find one, 
because^ they did not believe in them, and were think- 
ing of nothing but Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles ; 
having, as usual, set the cart before the horse, and 
taken the effect for the cause. 

So they were forced at last to let the poor professor 
ease his mind by writing a great book, exactly con- 
trary to all his old opinions; in which he proved 
that the moon was made of green cheese, and that 
all the mites in it (which you may see sometimes 
quite plain through a telescope, if you will only keep 
the lens dirty enough, as Mr. Weekes kept his vol- 
taic battery) are nothing in the world but little babies, 
who are hatching and swarming up there in millions, 
ready to come down into this world whenever children 
want a new little brother or sister. 

Which must be a mistake, for this one reason : 
that, there being no atmosphere round the moon, 
(though some one or other says there is, at least on 
the other side, and that he has been round at the 
back of it to see, and found that the moon was just 
the shape of a Bath bun, and so wet that the man 
in the moon went about on Midsummer-day in Mac- 
intoshes and Cording’s boots, spearing eels and sneez- 
ing); that, therefore, I say, there being no atmosphere. 


’^he IVater-Babies : 


158 

there can be no evaporation ; and, therefore, the dew 
point can never fall below 71*5 below zero of Fah 
renheit; and, therefore, it cannot be cold enough there 
about four o’clock in the morning to condense the 
babies’ mesenteric apophthegms into their left ven- 
tricles ; and, therefore, they can never catch the whoop- 
ing-cough ; and if they do not have whooping-cough, 
they cannot be babies at all ; and, therefore, there are 
no babies in the moon. — Q. E. D. 

Which may seem a roundabout reason; and so, 
perhaps, it is: but you will have heard worse ones 
in your time, and from better men than you are. 

But one thing is certain : that, when the good old 
doctor got his book written, he felt considerably 
relieved from Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and a 
few things infinitely worse; to wit, from pride and 
vainglory, and from blindness and hardness of heart; 
which are the true causes of Bumpsterhausen’s blue 
follicles, and of a good many other ugly things beside. 
Whereon the foul flood-water in his brains ran down, 
and cleared to a fine coffee-color, such as fish like 
to rise in, till very fine clean fresh-run fish did begin 
to rise in his brains ; and he caught two or three of 
them (which is exceedingly fine sport, for brain rivers), 
and anatomized them carefully, and never mentioned 
what he found out from them, except to little chil- 


J Fairy "Fale for a Land-Bahy, 


^59 


dren ; and became ever after a sadder and a wiser 
man ; which is a very good thing to become,, my 
dear little boy, even though one has to pay a heavy 
price for the blessing. 


*^V:e IV % ier-B ahie.% 



“ Stern Lawgiver ! yet dost wear 
The Godhead’s most benignant grace ; 

Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face : 

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; 

And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 

And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.” 

Wordsworth. — Ode to Duty. 


UT what became of little Tom*? 
He slipt away off the rocks 
into the water, as I said before. 
But he could not help thinking 
of little Ellie. He did not 
remember who she was ; but 
he knew that she was a little 
girl, though she was a hundred 
times as big as he. That is not surprising: size has 
nothing to do with kindred. A tiny weed may be 



A Fairy '-lale for a Land-Bahy, i6i 

first-cousin to a great tree; and a little dog like 
Vick -Icnows that Lioness is a dog too, though she 
is twenty times larger than herself. So Torn knew 
that Ellie was a little girl, and thought about her 
all th^t day, and longed to have had her to play 
with ; but he had very soon to think of something, 
else. And here is the account of what happened to 
him, as it was published next morning in the “ Water- 
proof Gazette,” on the finest watered paper, for the 
use of the great fairy Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, who 
reads the news very carefully every morning, and 
especially the police cases, as you will hear very 
soon. 

He was going along the rocks in three-fathom 
water, watching the pollock catch prawns, and the 
wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, 
when he saw a round cage of green withes; and 
inside it, looking very much ashamed of himself, sat 
his friend the lobster, twiddling his horns, instead of 
thumbs. 

“ What ! have you been naughty, and have they 
put you in the lock-up^” asked Tom. 

The lobster felt a little indignant at such a notion, 
but he was too much depressed in spirits to argue; 
so he only said, “ I can’t get out.” 

“ Why did you get in'?” 

1 1 


JVater-Bahies : 


162 

“ After that nasty piece of dead fish.” He had 
thought it looked and smelt very nice when he was 
outside, and so it did, for a lobster; but now he 
turned round and abused it because he was angry 
w'ith himself. 

“ Where did you get in ? ” 

“ Through that round hole at the top.” 

“Then why don’t you get out through it?” 

“Because I can’t;” and the lobster twiddled his 
horns more fiercely than ever, but he was forced to 
confess. 

“ I have jumped upwards, downwards, backwards, 
and sideways, at least four thousand times; and I 
can’t get out : I always get up underneath there, and 
can’t find the hole.” 

Tom looked at the trap, and having more wit 
than the lobster, he saw plainly enough what was 
the matter; as you may if you will look at a lob- 
ster-pot. 

“Stop a bit,” said Tom. “Turn your tail up to 
me, and I’ll pull you through hindforemost, and then 
you won’t stick in the spikes.” 

But the lobster was so stupid and clumsy that he 
couldn’t hit the hole. Like a great many fox-hunters, 
he was very sharp as long as he was in his own 
country; but as soon as they get out of it they lose 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 1 63 

their heads ; and so the lobster, so to speak, lost his 
tail. 

Tom reached and clawed down the hole after him, 
till he caught hold of him; and then, as was to be 
expected, the clumsy lobster pulled him in head 
foremost. 

“Hullo! here is a pretty business,” said Tom. 
“Now take your great claws, and break the points 
off those spikes, and then we shall both get out 
easily.” 

“Dear me, I never thought of that,” said the lob- 
ster; “and after all the experience of life that I have 
had ! ” 

You see, experience is of very little good unless a 
man, or a lobster, has wit enough to make use of 
it. For a good many people, like old Polonius, have 
seen all the world, and yet remain little better than 
children after all. 

But they had not got half the spikes away, when 
they saw a great dark cloud over them ; and lo and 
behold, it was the otter. 

How she did grin and girn when she saw Tom. 
“Yar!” said she, “you little meddlesome wretch, I 
have you now ! I will serve you out for telling the 
salmon where I was ! ” And she crawled all over the 
pot to get in. 


Tke Water-BaUes : 


164 

Tom was horribly frightened, and still more fright* 
ened when she found the hole in the top, and squeezed 
herself right down through it, all eyes and teeth. But 
no sooner was her head inside than valiant Mr. Lobster 
caught her by the nose, and held on. 

And there they were all three in the pot, rolling 
over and over, and very tight packing it was. And 
the lobster tore at the otter, and the otter tore at the 
lobster, and both squeezed and thumped poor Tom 
till he had no breath left in his body ; and I don’t 
know what would have happened to him if he had 
not at last got on the otter’s back, and safe out of 
the hole. 

He was right glad when he got out : but he would 
not desert his friend who had saved him ; and the first 
time he saw his tail uppermost he caught hold of it, 
and pulled with all his might. 

But the lobster would not let go. 

“Come along,” said Tom; “don’t you see she is 
dead ^ ” And so she was, quite drowned and dead. 

And that was the end of the wicked otter. 

But the lobster would not let go. 

“ Come along, you stupid old stick-in-the-mud,” cried 
Tom, “or the fisherman will catch you !” And that 
was true, for Tom felt some one above beginning to 
haul up the pot. 


'65 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land~Bahy. 

But the lobster would not let go. 

Tom saw the fisherman haul him up to the boatside, 
and thought it was all up with him. But when Mr. 
Lobster saw the fisherman, he gave such a furious and 
tremendous snap, that he snapped out of his hand, and 
out of the pot, and safe into the sea. But he left his 
knobbed claw behind him ; for it never came into his 
stupid head to let go after all, so he just shook his 
claw off as the easier method. It was something of 
a bull, that ; but you must know the lobster was an 
Irish lobster, and was hatched off Island Magee at the 
mouth of Belfast Lough. 

Tom asked the lobster why he never thought of 
letting go. He said very determinedly that it was a 
point of honor among lobsters. And so it is, as the 
mayor of Plymouth found out once to his cost — 
eight or nine hundred years ago, of course ; for if 
it had happened lately it would be personal to men- 
tion it. 

For one day he was so tired with sitting on a hard 
chair, in a grand furred gown, with a gold chain round 
his neck, hearing one policeman after another come in 
and sing, “ What shall we do with the drunken sailor, 
so early in the morning ? ” and answering them each 
exactly alike — 

“ Put him in the round-house till’ he gets sober, so 
earlv in the — ■ 


i66 


"The IVater-Bahies : 


That, when It was over, he jumped up, and played 
leap-frog with the town-clerk till he burst his buttons, 
and then had his luncheon, and burst some more but- 
tons, and then said : “ It is a low spring tide ; I shall 
go out this afternoon and cut my capers.” 

Now he did not mean to cut such capers as you eat 
with boiled mutton. It was the commandant of artil- 
lery at Valetta who used to amuse himself with cutting 
them, and who stuck upon one of the bastions a no 
tice, “ No one allowed to cut capers here but me,” 
which greatly edified the midshipmen In port, and 
the Maltese on the Nix Mangiare stairs. But all 
that the mayor meant was that he would go and 
have an afternoon’s fun, like any school-boy, and 
catch lobsters with an iron hook. 

So to the Mewstone he went, and for lobsters he 
looked. And, when he came to a certain crack in 
the rocks, he was so excited, that, instead of putting 
in his hook, he put in his hand ; and Mr. Lobster 
was at home, and caught him by the finger, and 
held on. 

“ Yah ! ” said the mayor, and pulled as hard as he 
dared ; but the more he pulled the more the lobstei 
pinched, till he was forced to be quiet. 

Then he tried to get his hook in with his othei 
hand ; but the hole was too narrow. 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 167 

Then he pulled again ; but he could not stand the 
pain. 

Then he shouted and bawled for help ; but there 
was no one nearer him than the men-of-war inside 
the breakwater. 

Then he began to turn a little pale; for the tide 
flowed, and still the lobster held on. 

Then he' turned quite white ; for the tide was up tc 
his knees, and still the lobster held on. 

Then he thought of cutting off his finger; but he 
wanted two things to do it with — courage and a 
knife ; and he had got neither. 

Then he turned quite yellow; for the tide was up 
to his waist, and still the lobster held on. 

Then he thought over all the naughty things he 
ever had done : all the sand which he had put in the 
sugar, and the sloe-leaves in the tea, and the water in 
the treacle, and the salt in the tobacco (because his 
brother was a brewer, and a man must help his own 
kin). 

Then he turned quite blue ; for the tide was up to 
his breast, and still the lobster held on. 

Then, I have no doubt, he repented fully of all the 
said naughty things which he had done, and promised 
to mend his life, as too many do when they think they 
have no life left to mend. Whereby, as they fancy, 


i68 


^he Water -B ahie s . 


they make a very cheap bargain. But the old fair} 
with the birch rod soon undeceives them. 

And then he grew all colors at once, and turned up 
his eyes like a duck in thunder ; for the water was up 
to his chin, and still the lobster held on. 

And then came a man-of-war’s boat round the Mew- 
stone, and saw his head sticking up out of the water. 
One said it was a keg of brandy, and another that it 
was a cocoa-nut, and another that it was a buoy loose, 
and another that it was a black diver, and wanted to 
fire at it, which would not have been pleasant for the 
mayor: but just then such a yell came out of a great 
hole in the middle of it that the midshipman in charge 
guessed what it was, and bade pull up to it as fast as 
they could. So somehow or other the Jack-tars got 
the lobster out, and set the mayor free, and put him 
ashore at the Barbican. He never went lobster-catch- 
ing again ; and we will hope he put no more salt in 
the tobacco, not even to sell his brother’s beer. 

And that is the story of the Mayor of Plymouth, 
which has two advantages — first, that of being quite 
true ; and second, that of having (as folks say all 
good stories ought to have) no moral whatsoever : 
no more, indeed, has any part of this book, because 
it is a fairy tale, you know. 

And now happened to Tom a most wonderful thing; 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 169 

for lie had not left the lobster five minutes before he 
came upon a water-baby. 

A real live water-baby, sitting on the white sand, 
very busy about a little point of rock. And when 
it saw Torn it looked up for a moment, and then 
cried, “ Why, you are not one of us. You are a 
new baby ! Oh, how delightful ! ” 

And it ran to Tom, and Tom ran to it, and they 
hugged and kissed each other for ever so long, they 
did not know why. But they did not want any intro- 
ductions there under the water. 

At last Tom said, “Oh, where have you been all 
this while *? I have been looking for you so long, 
and I have been so lonely.” 

“We have been here for days and days. There 
are hundreds of us about the rocks. How was it 
you did not see us, or hear us when we sing and 
romp every evening before we go home ? ” 

Tom looked at the baby again, and then he said : 

“ Well, this is wonderful! I have seen things just 
like you again and again, but I thought you were 
shells, or sea-creatures. I never took you for water- 
babies like myself.” 

Now, was that not very odd? So odd, indeed, that 
you will, no doubt, want to know how it happened, 
and why Tom could never find a water-baby till after 


T^he IVater^Babies : 


170 

he had got the lobster out of the pot. And, if you 
will read this story nine times over, and then think 
for yourself, you will find out why. It is not good 
for little boys to be told everything, and never to be 
forced to use their own wits. They would learn, then, 
no more than they do at Dr. Dulcimer’s famous sub- 
urban establishment for the idler members of the youth- 
ful aristocracy, where the masters learn the lessons, and 
the boys hear them — which saves a great deal of 
trouble — for the time being. 

“ Now,” said the baby, “ come and help me, or I 
shall not have finished before my brothers and sisters 
come, and it is time to go home.” 

“ What shall I help you at ? ” 

“At this poor dear little rock; a great clumsy 
boulder came rolling by in the last storm, and knocked 
all its head off, and rubbed off all its flowers. And 
now I must plant it again with sea-weeds, and coral- 
line, and anemones, and I will make it the prettiest 
little rock-garden on all the shore.” 

So they worked away at the rock, and planted it 
and smoothed the sand down round it, and capital fun 
they had till the tide began to turn. And then Tom 
heard all the other babies coming, laughing and sing- 
ing and shouting and romping; and the noise they 
made was just like the noise of the ripple. So hf 


A Fairy 'Fale for a Land-Baby. 171 

knew that he had been hearing and seeing the water- 
babies all along ; only he did not know them, because 
his eyes and ears were not opened. 

And in they came, dozens and dozens of them, some 
bigger than Tom and some smaller, all in the neatest 
little white bathing-dresses ; and when they found that 
he was a new baby, they hugged him and kissed him, 
and then put him in the middle and danced round him 
on the sand, and there was no one ever so happy as 
poor little Tom. 

“Now then,” they cried all at once, “we must 
come away home, we must come away home, or the 
tide will leave us dry. We have mended all the 
broken sea-weed, and put all the rock-pools in order, 
and planted all the shells again in the sand, and no- 
body will see where the ugly storm swept in last 
week.” 

And this is the reason why the rock-pools are 
always so neat and clean ; because the water-babies 
come in shore after every storm, to sweep them out, 
and comb them down, and put them all to rights 
again. 

Only where men are wasteful and dirty, and let 
sewers run into the sea, instead of putting the stuff 
upon the fields, like thrifty reasonable souls ; or throw 
herrings’ heads, and dead dog-fish, or any other refuse, 


1 7 2 The ffater-Babies . 

into the water ; or in any way make a mess upon the 
clean shore, — there the water-babies will not come, 
sometimes not for hundreds of years (for they can- 
not abide anything smelly or foul): but leave the 
sea-anemones and the crabs to clear away everything, 
till the good tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in 
soft mud and clean sand, where the water-babies can 
plant live cockles and whelks and razor-shells and sea- 
cucumbers and golden-combs, and make a pretty live 
garden again, after man’s dirt is cleared away. And 
that, I suppose, is the reason why there are no water- 
babies at any watering-place which I have ever seen. 

And where is the home of the water-babies ? In 
St. Brandan’s fairy isle. 

Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brandan, how 
he preached to the wild Irish, on the wild, wild Kerry 
coast; he and five other hermits, till they were weary, 
and longed to rest? For the wild Irish would not listen 
to them, or come to confession and to mass, but liked 
better to brew potheen, and dance the pater o’pee, and 
knock each other over the head with shillelaghs, and 
shoot each other from behind turf-dykes, and steal 
each other’s cattle, and burn each other’s homes ; till 
St. Brandan and his friends were weary of them, for 
they would not learn to be peaceable Christians 
at all. 


m 


A Fairy Tiale for a Land-Baby. 

So St. Brandan went out to the point of old Dun- 
more, and looked over the tide-way roaring round the 
Blasquets, at the end of all the world, and away into 
the ocean, and sighed — “ Ah that I had wings as a 
dove ! ” And far away, before the setting sun, he saw 
a blue fairy sea, and golden fairy islands, and he said, 
“ Those are the islands of the blest.” Then he and 
his friends got into a hooker, and sailed away and 
away to the westward, and were never heard of 

more. But the people who would not hear him 

were changed into gorillas, and gorillas they are until 
this day. 

And when St. Brandan and the hermits came to 
that fairy isle, they found it overgrown with cedars, 
and full of beautiful birds ; and he sat down under 
the cedars, and preached to all the birds in the air. 
And they liked his sermons so well that they told the 
fishes in the sea ; and they came, and St. Brandan 
preached to them ; and the fishes told the water- 

babies, who live in the caves under the isle ; and 

they came up by hundreds every Sunday, and St. 
Brandan got quite a neat little Sunday-school. And 
there he taught the water-babies for a great many 
hundred years, till his eyes grew too dim to see, 
and his beard grew so long that he dared not walk 
for fear of treading on it, and then he might have 


"The Water-Babies : 


>'74 

tumbled down. And at last he and the five hermits 
fell fast asleep under the cedar shades, and there they 
sleep unto this day. But the fairies took to the 
water-babies, and taught them their lessons them- 
selves. 

And some say that St. Brandan will awake, and - 
begin to teach the babies once more ; but some think 
that he will sleep on, for better for worse, till the 
coming of the Cocqcigrues. But, on still clear sum- 
mer evenings, when the sun sinks down into the sea, 
among golden cloud-capes and cloud-islands, and locks 
and friths of azure sky, the sailors fancy that they see, 
away to westward, St. Brandan’s fairy isle. 

But whether men can see it or not, St. Brandan’s 
Isle once actually stood there; a great land out in 
the ocean, which has sunk and sunk beneath the 
waves. Old Plato called it Atlantis, and told strange 
tales of the wise men who lived therein, and of the 
wars they fought in the old times. And from off 
that island came strange flowers, which linger still 
about this land : — the Cornish heath, and Cornish 
moneywort, and the delicate Venus’s hair, and the 
London-pride which covers the Kerry mountains, and 
the little pink butterwort of Devon, and the great 
blue butterwort of Ireland, and the Connemara heath, 
and the bristle-fern of the Turk waterfall, and many 


A Fairy Tiale for a Land-Bahy. 173 

a strange plant more; all fairy tokens left for wise 
men and good children from off St. Brandan’s Isle. 

Now when Tom got there, he found that the isle 
stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of 
caves. There were pillars of black basalt, like Staffa; 
^nd pillars of green and crimson serpentine, like Ky- 
nance ; and pillars ribboned with red and white and 
yellow sandstone, like Livermead; and there were 
blue grottos, like Capri ; and white grottos, like 
Adelsberg; all curtained and draped with sea-weeds, 
purple and crimson, green and brown; and strewn 
with soft white sand, on which the water-babies sleep 
every night. But, to keep the place clean and sweet, 
the crabs picked up all the scraps off the floor, and 
ate them like so many monkeys; while the rocks 
were covered with ten thousand sea-anemones and 
corals and madrepores, who scavenged the water all 
day long, and kept it nice and pure. But, to make 
up to them for having to do such nasty work, they 
were not left black and dirty, as poor chimney-sweeps 
and dustmen are. No; the fairies are more consid- 
erate and just than that; and have dressed them all 
in the most beautiful colors and patterns, till they 
look like vast flower-beds of gay blossoms. If you 
think I am talking nonsense, I can only say that it 
is true ; and that an old gentleman named Fourier used 


176 


"The fVater-Bahies : 


to say that we ought to do the same by chimney 
sweeps and dustmen, and honor them instead of de- 
spising them; and he was a very clever old gentle- 
man, but, unfortunately for him and the world, as 
mad as a March-hare. 

And, instead of watchmen and policemen to keep 
out nasty things at night, there were thousands and 
thousands of water-snakes; and most wonderful creat- 
ures they were. They were all named after the 
Nereids, the sea- fairies who took care of them, Eu- 
nice and Polynoe, Phyllodoce and Psamathe, and all 
the rest of the pretty darlings who swim round their 
Queen Amphitrite, and her car of cameo shell. They 
were dressed in green velvet, and black velvet, and 
purple velvet ; and were all jointed in rings ; and 
some of them had three hundred brains apiece, so 
that they must have been uncommonly shrewd detec- 
tives: and some had eyes in their tails ; and some 
had eyes in every joint, so that they kept a very 
sharp look-out ; and when they wanted a baby-snake, 
they just grew one at the end of their own tails, 
and when it was able to take care of itself it dropped 
off; so that they brought up their families very cheap- 
ly. But if any nasty thing came by, out they rushed 
upon it; and then out of each of their hundreds of 
feet there sprang a whole cutler’s shop of 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. ■ ij j 


Scythes, 

Billhooks, 

Pickaxes, 

Forks, 

Penknives, 

Rapiers, 

Sabres, 

Yataghans, 

Creeses, 

Ghoorka swords. 
Tucks, 


Javelins, 

Lances, 

Halberts, 

Gisarines, 

Poleaxes, 

Fishhooks, 

Bradawls, 

Gimblefs, 

Corkscrews, 

Pins, 

Needles, 


And so forth, 

which stabbed, shot, poked, pricked, scratched, ripped, 
pinked, and crimped those naughty beasts so terribly, 
that they had to run for their lives, or else be chopped 
into small pieces and be eaten afterwards. And, if 
that is not all, every word, true, then there is no 
faith in microscopes, and all is over with the Linnsean 
Society. 

And there were the water-babies in thousands, more 
than Tom, or you either, could count: — all the little 
children whom the good fairies take to, because their 
cruel mothers and fathers will not; all who are un- 
taught and brought up heathens, and all who come 
to grief by ill-usage or ignorance or neglect; all the 
little children who are overlaid, or given gin when 


^he fVater-Bahies : 


178 

they are young, or are let to drink out of liot kettles, 
or to fall into the fire; all the little children in alleys 
and courts, and tumble-down cottages, who die by 
fever, and cholera, and measles, and scarlatina, and 
nasty complaints which no one has any business to 
have, and which no one will have soine day, when 
folks have common sense; and all the litrle children 
who have been killed by cruel masters, and wicked 
soldiers; they were all there, except, of course, the 
babes of Bethlehem who were killed by wicked King 
Herod ; for they were rfaken straight to heaven long 
ago, as everybody knows, and we call them the Holy 
Innocents. 

But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty 
tricks, and left off tormenting dumb animals, now 
that he had plenty of playfellows to amuse him. In- 
stead of that, I am sorry to say, he would meddle 
with the creatures, all but the water-snakes, for they 
would stand no nonsense. So he tickled the madre- 
pores, to make them shut up ; and frightened the crabs, 
to make them hide in the sand and peep out at him 
with the tips of their eyes; and put stones into the 
anemones’ mouths, to make them fancy that their 
dinner was coming. 

The other children warned him, and said, “ Take 
care what you are at. Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid is com 


^79 


A Fairy Hale for a La?id-Baby, 

irig.” But Tom never heeded them, being quite 
riotous with high spirits and good luck, till, one 
Friday morning early, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid came 
indeed. 

A very tremendous lady she was ; and when the 
children saw her, they all stood in a row, very up- 
right indeed, and smoothed down their bathing-dresses, 
and put their hands behind them, just as if they were 
going to be examined by the inspector. 

And she had on a black bonnet, and a black 
shawl, and no crinoline at all; and a pair of large 
green spectacles, and a great hooked nose, hooked so 
much that the bridge of it stood quite up above her 
eyebrows; and under her arm she carried a great 
birch-rod. Indeed, she was so ugly, that Tom was 
tempted to make faces at her: but did not; for he 
did not admire the look of the birch-rod under her 
arm. 

And she looked at the children one by one, and 
seemed very much pleased with them, though she 
never asked them one question about how they were 
behaving; and then began giving them all sorts of 
nice sea-things — sea-cakes, sea-apples, sea-oranges, sea- 
bullseyes, sea-toffee; and to the very best of all she 
gave sea-ices, made out of sea-cows’ cream which 
never melt under water. 


1 8o ^he JVater-Bahies : 

And, if you don’t quite believe me, then just think 
— What is more cheap and plentiful than sea-rock^ 
Then why should there not be sea-toffee as well'? 
And every one can find sea-lemons (ready quartered 
too) if they will look for them at low tide; and sea- 
grapes too sometimes, hanging in bunches; and, if 
you will go to Nice, you will find the fish-market 
full of sea-fruit, which they call ^'^frutta di mare ” : 
though I suppose they call them '‘^fruits de mer ” now, 
out of compliment to that most successful, and there- 
fore most immaculate, potentate who is seemingly 
desirous of inheriting the blessing pronounced on those 
who remove their neighbors’ landmark. And, per- 
haps, that is the very reason why the place is called 
Nice, because there are so many nice things in the 
sea there : at least, if it is not, it ought to be. 

Now little Tom watched all these sweet things 
given away, till his mouth watered, and his eyes grew 
as round as an owl’s. For he hoped that his turn 
would come at last; and so it did. For the lady 
called him up, and held out her fingers with something 
in them, and popped it into his mouth; and, lo and 
behold, it was a nasty cold hard pebble. 

“You are a very cruel woman,” said he, and began 
to whimper. 

“ And you are a very cruel boy ; who puts pebbles 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby, i8i 

into the sea-anemones’ mouths, to take them in, and 
make them fancy that they had caught a good dinner % 
As you did to them, so I must do to you.” 

“ Who told you that? ” said Tom. 

“You did yourself, this very minute.” 

Tom had never opened his lips; so he was very 
much taken aback indeed. 

“Yes; every one tells me exactly what they have 
done wrong ; and that without knowing it themselves. 
So there is no use trying to hide anything from me. 
Now go, and be a good boy, and I will put no more 
pebbles in your mouth, if you put none in other creat- 
ures’.” 

“ I did not know there was any harm in it,” said 
Tom. 

“ Then you know now. People continually say 
that to me : but I tell them, if you don’t know that 
fire burns, that is no reason that it should not burn 
you ; and if you don’t know that dirt breeds fever, 
that is no reason why the fevers should not kill you. 
The lobster did not know that there was any harm in 
getting into the lobster-pot ; but it caught him all the 
same.” 

“ Dear me,” thought Tom, “ she knows everything ! ” 
And so she did, indeed. 

“And so, if you do not know that things are wrong 


82 


The ff ^ater-Bahies : 


that is no reason why you should not be punished foi 
them ; though not as much, not as much, my little 
man,” (and the lady looked very kindly, after all,J 
“ as if you did know.” 

“ Well, you are a little hard on a poor lad,” said 
Tom. 

“Not at all; I am the best friend you ever had 
in all your life. But I will tell you ; I cannot help 
punishing people when they do wrong. I like it no 
more than they do ; I am very often, very, very sorry 
for them, poor things: but I cannot help it. If I tried 
not to do it, I should do it all the same. For I work 
by machinery, just like an engine ; and am full of 
wheels and springs inside; and am wound up very 
carefully, so that I cannot help going.” 

“ Was it long ago since they wound you up ? ” 
asked Tom. For he thought, the cunning little fel- 
low, “ She will run down some day ; or they may 
forget to wind her up, as old Grimes used to forget 
to wind up his watch when he came in from the pub- 
lic-house : and then I shall be safe.” 

“ I was wound up once and for all, so long ago that 
I forget all about it.” 

“ Dear me,” said Tom, “ you must have been made 
i long time ! ” 

“ I never was made, my child ; and I shall go for 


Fairy '^Faie for a Land-Baby, 1 83 

ever and ever ; for I am as old as Eternity, and yet 
as young as Time.” 

And there came over the lady’s face a very curious 
expression — very solemn, and very sad; and yet very, 
very sweet. And she looked up and away, as if she 
were gazing through the sea, and through the sky, at 
something far, far off ; and as she did so, there came 
such a quiet, tender, patient, hopeful smile over her 
face, that Tom thought for the moment that she did 
not look ugly at all. And no more she did ; for she 
was like a great many people who have not a pretty 
feature in their faces, and yet are lovely to behold, and 
draw little children’s hearts to them at once ; because, 
though the house is plain enough, yet from the win- 
dows a beautiful and good spirit is looking forth. 

And Tom smiled in her face, she looked so pleasant 
for the moment. And the strange fairy smiled too, 
and said : 

“Yes. You thought me very ugly, just now, did 
you not % ” 

Tom hung down his head, and got very red about 
the ears. 

“ And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy in 
the world; and I shall be, till people behave them- 
selves as they ought to do. And then I shall grow 
as handsome as my sister, who is the loveliest fairy in 


The W'ater-Bahks : 


.84 

the world; and her name is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbe- 
doneby. So she begins where I end, and I begir 
where she ends ; and those who will not listen to her 
must listen to me, as you will see. Now, all of you 
run away, except Tom; and he may stay and see 
what I am going to do. It will be a very good 
warning for him to begin with, before he goes to 
school. 

“Now, Tom, every Friday I come down here and 
call up all who have ill-used little children, and serve 
them as they served the children.” 

And at that Tom was frightened, and crept under 
a stone ; which made the two crabs who lived there 
very angry, and frightened their friend the butter-fish 
into flapping hysterics : but he would not move for 
them. 

And first she called up all the doctors who give 
little children so much physic, (they were most of 
them old ones; for the young ones have learnt better, 
all but a few army surgeons, who still fancy that a 
baby’s inside is much like a Scotch grenadier’s,) and 
she set them all in a row; and very rueful they looked; 
for they knew what was coming. 

And first she pulled all their teeth out ; and then 
she bled them all round ; and then she dosed them 
with calomel, and jalap, and salts and senna, and brim- 


A Fairy "Fale for a Land~Baby. 183 

stone and treacle ; and horrible faces they made ; and 
then she gave them a great emetic of mustard and ' 
water, and no basins; and began all over again; and 
that was the way she spent the morning. 

And then she called up a whole troop of foolish 
ladies, who pinch up their children’s waists and toes; 
and she laced them all up in tight stays, so that they 
were choked and sick, and their noses grew red, and 
their hands and feet swelled ; and then she crammed 
their poor feet into the most dreadfully tight boots, 
and made them all dance, which they did most clum- 
sily indeed ; and then she asked them how they liked 
it ; and when they said not at all, she let them go ; 
because they had only done it out of foolish fashion, 
fancying it was for their children’s good, as if wasps’ 
waists and pigs’ toes could be pretty, or wholesome, or 
of any use to anybody. 

Then she called up all the careless nursery-maids, and 
stuck pins into them all over, and wheeled them about 
in perambulators with tight straps across their stomachs 
and their heads ah d arms hanging over the side, till 
they were quite* sick and stupid, and would have had 
sun-strokes : but, being under the water, they could 
only have water-strokes; which, I assure you, are 
nearly as bad, as you will find if you try to sit 
under a mill-wheel. And mind — when you hear a 


PVater-Bahies : 


l86 

rumbling at the bottom of the sea, sailors will tell 
you that it is a ground-swell : but now you know 
better. It is the old lady wheeling the maids about 
in perambulators. 

And by that time she was so tired, she had to go 
to luncheon. 

And after luncheon she set to work again, and called 
up all the cruel schoolmasters — whole regiments and 
brigades of them ; and, when she saw them, she frowned 
most terribly, and set to work in earnest, as if the best 
part of the day’s work was to come. More than half 
of them were nasty, dirty, frowzy, grubby, smelly old 
monks, who, because they dare not hit a man of their 
own size, amused themselves with beating little chil- 
dren instead ; as you may see in the picture of old 
Pope Gregory (good man and true though he was, 
when he meddled with things which he did under- 
stand), teaching children to sing their fa-fa-mi-fa with 
.a cat-o’-nine tails under his chair: but, because they 
never had any children of their own, they took into 
their heads (as some folks do still) that they were the 
only people in the world who knew how to manage 
children ; and they first brought into England, in the 
old Anglo-Saxon times, the fashion of treating free 
boys, and girls too, worse than you would treat a dog 
or a horse ■ but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has caught 


J Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 187 

them all long ago, and given them many a taste of 
their own rods ; and much good may it do them. 

And she boxed their ears, and thumped them over 
the head with rulers, and pandied their hands with 
canes, and told them that they told stories, and were 
this and that bad sort of people ; and the more they 
were very indignant, and stood upon their honor, and 
declared they told the truth, the rnore she declared they 
were not, and that they were only telling lies ; and at 
last she birched them all round soundly with her great 
birch rod, and set them each an imposition of three 
hundred thousand lines of Hebrew to learn by heart 
before she came back next Friday. And at that they 
all cried and howled so, that their breaths came all up 
through the sea like bubbles out of soda-water; and 
that is one reason of the bubbles in the sea. There 
are others: but that is the one which principally con- 
cerns little boys. And by that time she was so tired 
that she was glad to stop ; and, indeed, she had done a 
very good day’s work. 

Tom did not quite dislike the old lady ; but he 
could not help thinking her a little spiteful, — and 
no wonder if she was, poor old soul ; for, if she 
has to wait to grow handsome till people do as they 
would be done by, she will have to wait a very long 
time. 


i88 


T^he J^ater-Babies : 


a 


Pool old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ! she has a great 
deal of hard work before her, and had better have 
been born a washerwoman, and stood over a tub all 
day ; but, you see, people cannot always choose their 
own profession. 

But Tom longed to ask her one question ; and after 
all, whenever she looked at him, she did not look cross 
at all ; and now and then there was a funny smile in 
her face, and she chuckled to herself in a way which 
gave Tom courage, a?fd^at last he said : 

“ Pray, ma’am, may I ask you a question ? ” 

“ Certainly, my little dear.” 

“ Why don’t you bring all the bad masters here, 
and serve them out too ^ The butties that knock 
about the poor collier^^boys ; and the nailers that file 
off their lads’ no^es and hammer their fingers ; and all 
the master-sweeps, like my master Grimes ? I saw 
him fall into the water long ago ; so I surely expected 
he would have been here. Pm sure he was bad 
enough to me.” 

Then the old lady looked so very stern that Tom 
was quite frightened, and sorry that he had been so 
bold. But she was not angry with him. She only 
answered, “ I look after them all the week round ; 
and they are in a very different place from this, be« 
cause they knew that they were doing wrong.” 


Jl Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. i8g 

She spoke very quietly ; but there was something 
in her voice which made Tom tingle from head to 
foot, as if he had got into a shoal of sea-nettles. 

‘‘ But these people,” she went on, “ did not know 
thatOhey were doing wrong: they were only stupid 
and impatient; and therefore I only punish them till 
they become patient, and learn to use their common 
sense like reasonable beings. But as for chimney- 
sweeps, and collier-boys, and nailer lads, my sister 
has set good people to stop air that sort of thing ; 
and very much obliged to her I am ; for if she could 
only stop the cruel masters from ill-using poor chil- 
dren, I should grow handsome at least a thousand years 
sooner. x\nd now do you be a good boy, and do 
as you would be done** by, which they did not; and 
then, when my sister, Madame Doasyouwouldbedone- 
by, comes on Sunday, perhaps she will take notice of 
you, and teach you how to behave. She understands 
that better than I do.” And so she went. 

Tom was very glad to hear that there was no chance 
of meeting Grimes again, though he was a little sorry 
for him, considering that he used sometimes to give 
him the leavings of the beer : but he determined to be 
a very good boy all Saturday ; and he was ; for he 
never frightened one crab, nor tickled any live corals, 
nor put stones into the sea-anemones’ mouths, to make 


190 


"The JVater-Bahies : 


them fancy they had got a dinner; and, when Sunday 
morning came, sure enough, Mrs. Doasyouwouldbe- 
doneby came too. Whereat all the little children 
began dancing and clapping their hands, and Tom 
danced too with all his might. 

And as for the pretty lady, I cannot tell you what 
the color of her hair was, or of her eyes : no more 
could Tom; for, when any one looks at her, all they 
can think of is, that she has the sweetest, kindest, 
tenderest, funniest, merriest face they ever saw, or 
want to see. But Tom saw that she was a very tall 
woman, as tall as her sister; but instead of being 
gnarly, and horny, and scaly, and prickly, like her, 
she was the most nice, soft, fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, 
delicious creature who ever nursed a baby; and she 
understood babies thoroughly, for she had plenty of 
her own, whole rows and regiments of them, and 
has to this day. And all her delight was, whenever 
she had a spare moment, to play with babies, in which 
she showed herself a woman of sense; for babies are 
the best company, and the pleasantest playfellows, in 
the world ; at least, so all the wise people in the 
world think. And therefore when the children saw 
her, they naturally all caught hold of her, and pulled 
her till she sat down on a stone, and climbed into 
her lap, and clung round her neck, and caught hold 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 191 

or her hands; and then they all put their thumbs 
into their mouths, and began cuddling and purring 
like so many kittens, as they ought to have done. 
While those who could get nowhere else sat down 
on the sand, and cuddled her feet, — for no one, you 
know, wears shoes in the water, except horrid old 
bathing-women, who are afraid of the water-babies 
pinching their horny toes. And Tom stood staring 
at them ; for he could not understand what it was 
all about. 

“And who are you, you little darling?” she said. 

“ Oh, that is the new baby ! ” they all cried, pulling 
their thumbs out of their mouths; “and he never had 
any mother,” and they all put their thumbs back again, 
for they did not wish to lose any time. 

“ Then I will be his mother, and he shall have 
the very best place; so get out all of you, this mo- 
ment.” 

And she took up two great armfuls of babies — 
nine hundred under one arm, and thirteen hundred 
under the other — and threw them away, right and 
left, into the water. But they minded it no more 
than the naughty boys in Struwelpeter minded when 
St. Nicholas dipped them in his inkstand; and diH 
not even take their thumbs out of their mouths, 
but came paddling and wriggling back to her like 


1^2 ‘The IVater-Bahies : 

so many tadpoles, till you could see nothing of hei 
from head to foot for the swarm of little babies. 

But she took Tom in her arms, and laid him in 
the softest place of all, and kissed him, and patted 
him, and talked to him, tenderly and low, such things 
as he had never heard before in his life; and Tom 
looked up into her eyes, and loved her, and loved, till 
he fell fast asleep from pure love. 

And when he woke, she was telling the children 
a story. And what story did she tell them ? One 
story she told them, which begins every Christmas 
Eve, and yet never ends at all forever and ever; 
and, as she went on, the children took their thumbs out 
of their mouths, and listened quite seriously ; but not 
sadly at all ; for she never told them anything sad ; and 
Tom listened too, and never grew tired of listening. 
And he listened so long that he fell fast asleep again, 
and, when he woke, the lady was nursing him still. 

“Don’t go away,” said little Tom. “This is so 
nice. I never had any one to cuddle me before.” 

“Don’t go away,” said all the children; “you have 
not sung us one song.” 

“Well, I have time for only one. So what shall 
it be ^ ” 

“The doll you lost! The doll you lost!” cried 
all the babies at once. 


^93 


A Fairy Fale for a Land^Bahy. 
So the strange fairy sang: — 


1 once had a sweet little doll, dears. 

The prettiest doll in the world ; 

Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears. 
And her hair was so charmingly curled. 

But I lost my poor little doll, dears, 

As I played in' the heath one day; 

And I cried for her more than a week, dears; 
But I never could find vvhere she lay. 

I found my poor little doll, dears. 

As I played in the heath one day : 

Folks say she is terribly changed, dears, 

For her paint is all washed away. 

And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears. 
And her hair not the least bit curled : 

Yet for old sakes’ sake she is still, dears, 

> The prettiest doll in the world. 


What a silly song for a fairy to sing! 


water-babies to be quite delighted 



And 
at it! 


Well, but you see they have not the advantage 
of Aunt Agitate’s Arguments in the sea-land down 
below. 

“Now,” said the fairy to Tom, “will you be a 
good boy for my sake, and torment no more sea- 
beasts, till I come back*?” 

“And you will cuddle me again?” said poor little 


Tom 


194 


"The JVater-Bahies : 


“ Of course I will, you little duck. I should like 
to take you with me, and cuddle you all the way 
only I must not;” and away she went. 

So Tom really tried to be a good boy, and tor- 
mented no sea-beasts after that, as long as he lived ; 
and he is quite alive, I assure you, still. 

Oh, how good little boys ought to be, who have 
kind pussy mammas to cuddle them and tell them 
stories; and how afraid they ought to be of growing 
naughty, and bringing tears into their mammas’ pretty 
eyes ! 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 



CHAPTER VI. 


” Thou little’child, yet glorious in the might 
Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being’s height, 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
The Years to bring the Inevitable yoke — 

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? 

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 

And custom lie upon thee with a weight 
Heavy^as frost, and deep almost as life.” 

Wordsworth. 



ERE I come to the very sad- 
dest part of all my story. I 
know some people will only 
laugh at it, and call it much 
ado about nothing. But 1 
know one man who would 
not; and he was an officer with a pair of gray 
moustaches as long as your arm, who said once in 



‘The IVaier-BMes : 


196 

company, that two of the most heart-rending sights 
in the world, which moved him most to tears, which 
he would do anything to prevent or remedy, were a 
child over a broken toy, and a child stealing sweets. 

The company did not laugh at him ; his moustaches 
were too long and too gray for that : but, after he was 
gone, they called him sentimental, and so forth, all but 
one dear little old Quaker lady, with a soul as white as 
her cap, who was not, of course, generally partial to 
soldiers ; and she said very quietly, like a Quaker : 

“ Friends, it is borne upon my mind that that is a 
truly brave man.” 

Now you may fancy that Tom was quite good, 
when he had everything that he could want or wish ; 
but you would be very much mistaken. Being quite 
comfortable is a very good thing ; but it does not 
make people good. Indeed, it sometimes makes them 
naughty, as it has made the people in America ; and 
as it made the people in the Bible, who waxed fat 
and kicked, like horses overfed and underworked. 
And I am very sorry to say that this happened to 
little Tom. For he grew so fond of the sea-bull’s- 
eyes and sea-lollipops, that his foolish little head could 
think of nothing else : and he was always longing for 
more, and wondering when the strange lady would 
come again and give him some, and what she would 


197 


J Fairy Hale for a Land-Bahy, 

give him, and how much, and whether she would give 
him more than the others. And he thought of nothing 
but lollipops by day, and dreamt of nothing else by 
night, — and what happened then *? 

That he began to watch the lady to see where she 
kept the sweet things; and began hiding, and sneaking, 
and following her about, and pretending to be looking 
the other way, or going after something else, till he 
found out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of- 
pearl cabinet, away in a deep crack of the rocks. 

And he longed to go to the cabinet, and yet he was 
afraid ; and then he longed again, and was less afraid ; 
and at last, by continual thinking about it, he longed 
so violently, that he v/as not afraid at all. And one 
night, when all the other children were asleep, and he 
could not sleep for thinking of lollipops, he crept away 
among the rocks, and got to the cabinet, and behold I 
it was open. 

But, when he saw all the nice things inside, instead 
of being delighted, he was quite frightened, and wished 
he had never come there. And then he would only 
touch them, and he did ; and then he would only taste 
one, and he did ; and then he would only eat one, and 
he did ; and then he would only eat two, and then 
three, and so on ; and then he was terrified lest she 
should come and catch him, and began gobbling them 


Water-Babies : 


198 

down so fast that he did not taste them, or have any 
pleasure in them ; and then he felt sick, and would 
have only one more ; and then only one more again ; 
and so on till he had eaten them all up. 

And all the while, close behind him, stood Mrs. 
Bedonebyasyoudid. 

Some people may say. But why did she not keep 
her cupboard locked^ Well, I know. — It may 
seem a very strange thing, but she never does keep 
her cupboard locked ; every one may go and taste 
for themselves, and fare accordingly. It is very odd, 
but so it is ; and I am quite sure that she knows best. 
Perhaps she wishes people to keep their fingers out of 
the fire, by having them burnt. 

She took off her spectacles, because she did not like 
to see too much ; and in her pity she arched up her 
eyebrows into her very hair, and her eyes grew so wide 
that they would have taken in all the sorrows of the 
world, and filled with great big tears, as they too 
often do. 

But all she said was : 

“Ah, you poor little dear! you are just like all the 
rest.” 

But she said it to herself, and Tom neither heard 
nor saw her. Now, you must not fancy that she was 
sentimental at all. If you do, and think that she is 


199 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 

going to let off you, or me, or any human being 
when we do wrong, because she is too tender-hearted 
to punish us, then you will find yourself very much 
mistaken, as many a man does every year and every 
day. 

But what did the strange fairy do when site saw 
all her. lollipops eaten ? 

Did she fly at Tom, catch him by the scruff of 
the neck, hold him, howk him, hump him, hurry him, 
hit him, poke him, pull him, pinch him, pound him, 
put him in the corner, shake him, slap him, set 
him on a cold stone to reconsider himself, and so 
forth ? 

Not a bit. You may watch her at work, if you 
know where to find her. But you will never see her 
do that. For, if she had, she knew quite well, Tom 
would have fought, and kicked, and bit, and said bad 
words, and turned again that moment into a naughty 
little heathen chimney-sweep, with his hand, like Ish- 
mael’s of old, against every man, and every man’s 
hand against him. 

Did she question him, hurry him, frighten him, 
threaten him, to make him confess? Not a bit. You 
may see her, as I said, at her work often enough, 
if you know where to look for her; but you will 
never see her do that. For if she had, she would 


200 


Water ’Babies : 


have tempted him to tell lies in his fright; and that 
would have been worse for him, if possible, than even 
becoming a heathen chimney-sweep again. 

No. She leaves that for anxious parents and teach- 
ers (lazy ones, some call them), who, instead of giving 
children a fair trial, such as they would expect and 
demand for themselves, force them by fright to con- 
fess their own faults, — which is so cruel and unfair, 
that no judge on the bench dare do it to the wickedest 
thief or murderer, for the good British law forbids 
it, — ay, and even punish them to make them confess, 
which is so detestable a crime, that it is never com- 
mitted now, save by Inquisitors, and Kings of Naples, 
and a few other wretched people of whom the world 
is weary. And then they say, “We have trained up 
the child in the way he should go, and when he 
grew up he has departed from it. Why then did 
Solomon say that he would not depart from it.” But 
perhaps the way of beating, and hurrying, and fright- 
ening, and questioning, was not the way that the child 
should go; for it is not even the. way in which a 
colt should go, if you want to break it in, and make 
it a quiet serviceable horse. 

Some folks may say, “Ah! but the Fairy does not 
need to do that, if she knows everything already.” 
True. But if she did not know, she would not surely 


201 


A Fairy Tale for a Land^Baby, 

behave worse than a British judge and jury; and 
no more should parents and teachers either. 

So she just said nothing at all about the matter, 
not even when Tom came next day with the rest for 
sweet things. He was horribly afraid of coming; but 
he was still more afraid of staying away, lest any 
one should suspect him. He was dreadfully afraid, 
too, lest there should be no sweets, — as was to be 
expected, he having eaten them all, — and lest then 
the fairy should inquire who had taken them. But, 
behold ! she pulled out just as many as ever, which 
astonished Tom, and frightened him still more. 

And, when the fairy looked him full in the face, 
he shook from head to foot; however, she gave 
him his share like the rest, and he thought within 
himself that she could not have found him out. 

But, when he put the sweets into his mouth, he 
hated the taste of them ;. and they made him so 
sick, that he had to get away as fast as he could; 
and terribly sick he was, and very cross and un- 
happy, all the week after. 

Then, when next week came, he had his share 
again; and again the fairy looked him full in the 
face ; but more sadly than she had ever looked. 
And he could not bear the sweets; but took them 
again in spite of himself. ^ 


202 


T^ke kVater-Bahies : 


And, when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came 
he wanted to be cuddled like the rest; but she said, 
very seriously : 

“ I should like to cuddle you ; but I cannot, you 
are so horny and prickly.” 

And Tom looked at himself: and he was all over 
prickles, just like a sea-egg. 

Which was quite natural ; for you must know 
and believe that people’s souls make their bodies, 
just as a snail makes its shell (I am not joking, 
my little man; I am in serious, solemn earnest). 
And, therefore, when Tom’s soul grew all prickly 
with naughty tempers, his body could not help 
growing prickly too, so that nobody would cuddle 
him, or play with him, or even like to look at him. 

What could Tom do now, but go away and hide 
in a corner^ and cry? For nobody would play with 
him, and he knew full well why. 

And he was so miserable all that week that, when 
the ugly fairy came, and looked at him once 
more full in the face, more seriously and sadly than 
ever, he could stand it no longer, and thrust the 
sweetmeats away, saying, “No, I don’t want any; I 
can’t bear them now,” and then burst out crying, 
poor little man, and told Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid 
every word as it happened. 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby 20^ 

He was horribly frightened when he had done so ; 
for he expected her to punish him very severely. 
But, instead, she only took him up and kissed him, 
which was not quite pleasant, for her chin was very 
bristly indeed ; but he was so lonely-hearted, he 
thought that rough kissing was better than none. 

“I will forgive you, little man,” she said. “I 
always forgive every one the moment they tell me 
the truth of their own accord.” 

“Then you will take away all these nasty prickles?” 

“That is a very different matter. You put them 
there yourself, and only you can take them away.” 

“But how can I do that?” asked Tom, crying 
afresh. 

“Well, I think it is time for you to go to school; 
so I shall fetch you a schoolmistress, who will teach 
you how to get rid pf your prickles.” And so she 
went away. 

Tom was frightened at the notion of a school- 
mistress; for he thought she would certainly come 
with a birch-rod or a cane; but he comforted him- 
self, at last, that she might be something like the 
old woman in Vendale — which she was not in the 
least; for, when the fairy brought her, she was the 
most beautiful little girl that ever was seen, with 
ong curls floating behind her like a golden cloud< 


204 


’The fVater-Babies : 


and long robes floating all round her like a silver 
one. 

“There he is,” said the fairy; “and you must 
teach him to be good,, whether you like or not.” 

“I know,” said the little girl; but she did not 
seem quite to like, for she put her finger in her 
mouth, and looked at Tom under her brows; and 
Tom put his finger in his mouth, and looked at her 
under his brows, for he was horribly ashamed of 
himself. 

The little girl seemed hardly to know how to 
begin; and perhaps she would never have begun at 
all, if poor Tom had not burst out crying, and beg- 
ged her to teach him to be good, and help him to 
cure his prickles; and at that she grew so tender- 
hearted, that she began teaching him as prettily as 
ever child was taught in the world. 

And what did the little girl teach Tom? She 
taught him, first, what you have been taught ever 
since you said your first prayers at your mother’s 
knees; but she taught him much more simply. For 
the lessons in that world, my child, have no such 
hard words in them as the lessons in this, and there- 
fore the water-babies like them better than you like 
your lessons, and long to learn them more and more ; 
and grown men cannot puzzle nor quarrel over their 


205 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby. 

meaning, as they do here on land; for those lessons 
all rise clear and pure, like the Test out of Overton 
Pool, out of the everlasting ground of all life and 
truth. 

So she taught Tom every day in the week; only 
on Sundays she always went away home, and the 
kind fairy took her place. And, before she had 
taught Tom many Sundays, his prickles had vanished 
quite away, and his skin was smooth and clean 
again. 

“ Dear me ! ” said the little girl ; “ why, I know 
you now. You are the very same chimney-sweep 
who came into niy bedroom.” 

“ Dear me !” cried Tom. “And I know you, too, 
now. You are the very little white lady whom I 
saw in bed.” And he jumped at her and longed to 
hug and kiss her; but did not, remembering that she 
was a lady born; so he only jumped round and round 
her,' till he was quite tired. 

And then they began telling each other all their 
story, — how he had got into the water, and she had 
fallen over the rock ; and how he had swam down to 
the sea, and how she had flown out of the window; 
and how this, that, and the other, till it was all talked 
out: and then they both began over again, and I 
caift say which of the two talked fastest. 


2o6 


T^he IVater-Bahies • 


And then they set to work at their lessons again, 
and both liked them so well, that they went on well 
till seven full years were past and gone. 

You may fancy that Tom was quite content and 
happy all those seven years; but the truth is, he was 
not. He had always one thing on his mind, and that 
was — where little Ellie went, when she went home 
on Sundays. 

To a very beautiful place, she said. 

But what was the beautiful place like, and where 
was it? 

Ah ! that is just what she could not say. And it 
is strange, but true, that no one can say; and that 
those who have been oftenest in it, or even nearest 
to it, can say least about it, and make people under- 
stand least what it is like. There are a good many 
folks about the Other-end-of-No where (where Tom 
went afterwards), who pretend to know it from north 
to south as well as if they had been penny-postmen 
there; but, as they are safe at the Other-end-of-No- 
where, nine hundred and ninety-nine million miles 
away, what they say cannot concern us. 

But the dear, sweet, loving, wise, good, self-sacri- 
ficing people, who really go there, can never tell you 
anything about it, save that it is the most beautiful 
place in all the world; and, if you ask them more^ 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby, 207 

they grow modest, and hold their peace, for fear of 
being laughed at; and quite right they are. 

So all that good little Ellie could say was, that it 
was worth all the rest of the world put together. 
And of course that only made Tom the more anxious 
to go likewise. 

“ Miss Ellie,” he said, at last, “ I will know why 
I cannot go with you when you go home, on Sun- 
days, or I shall have no peace, and give you none 
either.” 

“You must ask the fairies that.” 

So when the fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, came 
next, Tom asked her. 

“ Little boys who are only fit to play with sea-beasts 
cannot go there,” she said.^ “ Those who go there 
must go first where they do not like, and do what 
they do not like, and help somebody they do not 
like.” 

“ Why, did Ellie do that ? ” 

“Ask her.” 

And Ellie blushed, and said, “Yes, Tom; I did 
not like coming here at first; I was so much happier 
at home, where it is always Sunday. And I was 
afraid of you, Tom, at first, because — because — ” 

“Because I was all over prickles^ But I am not 
prickly now, am I, Miss Ellie?” 


2o8 


J^'ater-Bahies : 


“No,” said Ellie. “I like you very much now, 
and I like coming here, too.” 

“And perhaps,” said the fairy, “you will learn to 
like going where you don’t like, and helping some 
one that you don’t like, as Ellie has.” 

But Tom put his finger in his mouth, and hung 
his head down ; for he did not see that at all. 

So when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, Tom 
asked her; for he thought in his little head, she is 
not so strict as her sister, and perhaps she may let me 
off more easily. 

Ah, Tom, Tom, silly fellow! and yet I don’t know 
why I should blame you, while so many grown people 
have got the very same notion in their heads. 

But, when they try it, they get just the same answer 
as Tom did. For, when he asked the second fairy, 
she told him just what the first did, and in the very 
same words. 

Tom was very unhappy at that. And, w^hen Ellie 
went home on Sunday, he fretted and cried all day, 
and did not care to listen to the fairy’s stories about 
good children, though they were prettier than ever. 
Indeed, the more he overheard of them, the less he 
liked to listen, because they were all about children 
who did what they did not like, and took trouble 
for other people, and worked to feed their little 


brothers and sisters, instead of caring only for their 
play. And, when she began to tell a story about a 
holy child in old times, who was martyred by the 
heathen because it would not worship idols, Tom 
could bear no more, and ran away and hid among 
the rocks. 

And, when Ellie came back, he was shy with her, 
because he fancied she looked down on him, and 
thought him a coward. And then he grew quite 
cross with her, because she was superior to him, and 
did what he could not do. And poor Ellie was 
quite surprised and sad; and at last Tom burst out 
crying; but he would not tell her what was really 
in his mind. 

And all the while he was eaten up with curiosity 
to know where Ellie went to; so that he began not 
to care for his playmates, or for the sea-palace, or 
anything else. But perhaps that made matters all the 
easier for him ; for he grew so discontented with 
everything round him, that he did not care to stay, 
and did not care where he went. 

“Well,” he said, at last, “I am so miserable here, 
Pil go; if only you will go with me?” 

“Ah!” said Ellie, “T wish I might; but the worst 
of it is, that the fairy says, that you must go alone, 
if you go at all. Now don’t poke that poor crab 


210 


The IVater-Bahies : 


about, Tom (for he was feeling very naughty and 
mischievous), or the fairy will have to punish you.” 

Tom was very nearly saying, “ I don’t care if she 
does;” but he stopped himself in time. 

‘‘ I know what she wants me to do,” he said, whin- 
ing most dolefully. “ She wants me to go after that 
horrid old Grimes. I don’t like him, that’s certain. 
And if I find him, he will turn me into a chimney- 
sweep again, I know. That's what I have been 
afraid of all along.” 

“No, he won’t, — I know as much as that. No- 
body can turn water-babies into sweeps, or hurt them 
at all, as long as they are good.” 

“Ah,” said naughty Tom, “ I see what you want; 
you are persuading me all along to go, because you 
are tired of me, and want to get rid of me.” 

Little Ellie opened her eyes very wide at that, and 
they were all brimming over with tears. 

“ Oh, Tom, Tom ! ” she said very mournfully— and 
then she cried, “ Oh, Tom ! where are you ? ” 

And Tom cried, “Oh, Ellie, where are you ?” 

For neither of them could see each other — not the 
least. Little Ellie vanished quite away, and Tom heard 
her voice calling him, and growing smaller and smaller, 
and fainter and fainter, till all was silent. 

Who was frightened then but Tom? He swam up 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. 2 1 1 

and down among the rocks, into all the halls and chani 
bers, faster than ever he swam before, but could not 
find her. He shouted after her, but she did not 
answer ; he asked all the other children, but they had 
not seen her ; and at last he went up to the top of the 
water and began crying and screaming for Mrs. Doas- 
youwouldbedoneby, but she did not come. Then he 
began crying and screaming for Mrs. Bedonebyasyou- 
did — which perhaps was the best thing to do — for 
she came in a moment. 

“Oh!” said Tom. “ Oh dear, oh dear! I have 
been naughty to Ellie, and I have killed her — I know 
I have killed her.” 

“Not quite that,” said the fairy ; “but I have sent 
her away home, and she will not come back again for 
I do not know how long.” 

And at that Tom cried so bitterly, that the salt sea 
was swelled with his tears, and the tide was *3,954,- 
620,819 higher than it had been the day be- 

fore : but perhaps that was owing to the waxing of 
the moon. It may have been so ; but it is considered 
right in the new philosophy, you know, to give spiritual 
causes for physical phenomena — especially in parlor- 
tables; and, of course, physical causes for spiritual ones, 
like thinking, and praying, and knowing right from 
wrong. And so they odds it till it comes even, as 
folks say down in Berkshire. 


212 


T^he IVa ter ‘Babies : 


“ Ho w cruel of you to send Ellie away ! ” sobbed 
Tom. “ However, I will find her again, if I go to 
the world’s end to look for her.” 

The fairy did not’ slap Tom, and tell him to hold 
his tongue; but she took him on her lap very kindly, 
just as her sister would have done; and put him in 
mind how it was not her fault, because she was wound 
up inside, like watches, and could not help doing things 
whether she liked or not. And then she told him how 
he had been in the nursery long enough, and must go 
out now and see the world, if he intended ever to be 
a man ; and how he must go all alone by himself as 
every one else that ever was born has to go, and see 
with his own eyes, and smell with his own nose, and 
make his own bed and lie on it, and burn his own 
fingers if he put them into the fire. And then she 
told him how many fine things there were to be seen 
in the world, and what an odd, curious, pleasant, orderly, 
respectable, well-managed, and, on the whole, successful 
(as, indeed, might have been expected) sort of a place 
it was, if people would only be tolerably brave and 
honest and good in it ; and then she told him not to 
be afraid of anything he met, for nothing would harm 
him if he remembered all his lessons, and did what he 
knew was right. And at last she comforted poor little 
Tom so much, that he was quite eager to go, and 


J Fairy T^ale for a Land^Baby, 213 

wanted to set out that minute. “Only,” he said, “ if 
I might see Ellie once before I went ! ” 

“ Why do you want that *? ” 

“ Because — because I should ’be so much happiei 
if I thought she had forgiven me.” 

And in the twinkling of an eye there stood Ellie, 
smiling, and looking so happy that Tom longed to kiss 
her ; but was still afraid it would not be respectful, 
because she was a lady born. 

“ I am going, Ellie ! ” said Tom. “ I am going, if 
it is to the world’s end. But I don’t like going at all, 
and that’s the truth.” 

“ Pooh ! pooh ! pooh I ” said the fairy. “You will 
like it very well indeed, you little rogue, and you 
know that at the bottom of your heart. But if 
you don’t, I will make you like it. Come here, and 
see what happens to people who do only what is 
pleasant.” 

And she took out of one of her cupboards (she had 
all sorts of mysterious cupboards in the cracks of the 
rocks) the most wonderful waterproof book, full of 
such photographs as never were seen. For she had 
found out photography (and this is a fact) more than 
13,598,000 years before anybody was born ; and, what 
is more, her photographs did not merely represent light 
and shade, as ours do, but color also, and all colors, as 


214 


I'he JVater-Bahies : 


you may see if you look at a black cock’s tail 
or a butterfly’s wing, or, indeed, most things that 
are or can be, so to speak. And, therefore, her pho- 
tographs were very curious and famous, and the chil- 
dren looked with great delight for the opening of the 
book. 

And on the title-page was written, “ The History 
of the great and famous nation of the Doasyoulikes, 
who came away from the country of Hardwork, be- 
cause they wanted to play on the Jews’-harp all day 
long.” 

In the first picture they saw these Doasyoulikes 
living in the land of Readymade, at the foot of the 
Happygolucky Mountains, where flapdoodle grows 
wild ; and if you want to know what that is, you 
must read Peter Simple. 

They lived very much such a life as those jolly old 
Greeks in Sicily, whom you may see painted on the 
ancient vases, and really there seemed to be great ex- 
cuses for them, for they had no need to work. 

Instead of houses, they lived in the beautiful caves 
of tufa, and bathed in the warm springs three times a 
day ; and, as for clothes, it was so warm there that the 
gentlemen walked about in little beside a cocked hat 
and a pair of straps, or some light summer tackle of 
that kind ; and the ladies all gathered gossamer in 


A Fairy "iale for a Land-Bahy 21^ 

autumn (when they were not too lazy) to make their 
winter dresses. 

They were very fond of music, but it was too much 
trouble to learn the piano or the violin ; and, as for 
dancing, that would have been too great an exertion. 
So they sat on ant-hills all day long, and played on the 
Jews’-harp ; and, if the ants bit them, why they just 
got up and went to the next ant-hill, till they were 
bitten there likewise. 

And they sat under the flapdoodle-trees, and let the 
flapdoodle drop into their mouths ; and under the vines, 
and squeezed the grape-juice down their throats ; and, 
if any little pigs ran about ready roasted, crying, 
“ Come and eat me,” as was their fashion in that 
country, they waited till the pigs ran against their 
mouths, and then took a bite, and were content, just 
as so many oysters would have been. 

They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever came 
near their land ; and no tools, for everything was ready^ 
made to their hand; and the stern old fairy Necessity 
never came near them to hunt them up, and make 
them use their wits, or die. 

And so on, and so on, and so on, till there were 
never such comfortable, easy-going, happy-go-lucky 
people in the world. 

“ Well, that is a jolly life,” said Tom. 


2i6 


JVater-Babies : 


“ You think so ? ” said the fairy. “ Do you see that 
great peaked mountain there behind,” said the fairy, 
with smoke coming out of its top ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And do you see all those ashes, and slag, and 
cinders, lying about?” 

‘^Yes.” 

“ Then turn over the next five hundred years, and 
you will see what happens next.” 

And behold the mountain had blown up like a 
barrel of gunpowder, and then boiled over like a 
kettle; whereby one third of the Doasyoulikes were 
blown into the air, and another third were smothered 
in ashes; so that there was only one third left. 

“You see,” said the fairy, “what comes of living 
on a burning mountain.” 

“ Oh, why did you not warn them ? ” said little 
Elbe. 

“ I did warn them all that I could. I let the smoke 
come out of the mountain; and wherever there is 
smoke there is fire. And I laid the ashes and cinders 
all about ; and wherever there are cinders, cinders may 
be again. But they did not like to face facts, my 
dears, as very few people do ; and so they invented a 
cock-and-bull story, which, I am sure, I never told 
them, that the smoke was the breath of a giant, whom 


J Fairy Tale for a Land^Bahy, 217 

some gods or other had buried under the mountain ; 
and that the cinders were what the dwarfs roasted the 
little pigs whole with ; and other nonsense of that 
kind. And, when folks are in that humor, I cannot 
teach them, save by the good old birch-rod.” 

And then she turned over the next five hundred 
years : and there were the remnant of the Doasyoulikes, 
doing as they liked, as before. They were too lazy 
to move away from the mountain; so they said. If it 
has blown up once, that is all the more reason that it 
should not blow up again. And they were few in 
number : but they only said. The more the merrier, 
but the fewer the better fare. However, that was not 
quite true; for all the flapdoodle-trees were killed by 
the volcano, and they had eaten all the roast pigs, 
who, of course, could not be expected to have little 
ones. So they had to live very hard, on nuts and 
roots which they scratched out of the ground with 
sticks. Some of them talked of sowing corn, as their 
ancestors used to do, before they came into the land 
of Readymade ; but they had forgotten how to make 
ploughs, (they had forgotten even how to make Jews’, 
harps by this time,) and had eaten all the seed-corn 
which they brought out of the land of Hardwork 
vears since ; and of course it was too much trouble to 
go away and find more. So they lived miserably on 


2i8 


"The Water^Bahies : 


roots and nuts, and all the weakly little children had 
great stomachs, and then died. 

“Why,” said Tom, “they are growing no better 
than savages.” 

“ And look how ugly they are all getting,” said 
Ellie. 

“Yes; when people live on poor vegetables instead 
of roast beef and plum-pudding, their jaws grow large, 
and their lips grow coarse, like the poor Paddies who 
eat potatoes.” 

And she turned over the next five hundred years. 
And there they were all living up in trees, and making 
nests to keep off the rain. And underneath the trees 
lions were prowling about. 

“ Why,” said Ellie, “ the lions seem to have eaten 
a good many of them, for there are very few left 
now.” 

“Yes,” said the fairy; “you see it was only the 
strongest and most active ones who could climb the 
trees, and so escape.” 

“ But what great, hulking, broad-shouldered chaps 
they are,” said Tom; “they are a rough lot as ever 
I saw.” 

‘‘Yes, they are getting very strong now; for the 
ladies will not marry any but the very strongest and 
fiercest gentlemen, who can help them up the trees 
out of the lions* way.** 


219 


A Fairy Halt for a Land-Baby. 

And she turned over the next five hundred years. 
And in that they were fewer still, and stronger, and 
fiercer; but their feet had changed shape very oddly 
for they laid hold of the branches with their great toes, 
as if they had been thumbs, just as a Hindoo tailor 
uses his toes to thread his needle. 

The children were very much surprised, and asked 
the fairy whether that was her doing. 

“Yes, and no,” she said, smiling. “It was only 
those who could use their feet as well as their hands 
who could get a good living, or, indeed, get mar- 
ried; so that they got the best of everything, and 
starved out all the rest ; and those who are left 
keep up a regular breed of toe-thumb-men, as a 
breed of shorthorns, or sky e-terriers, or fancy pigeons 
is kept up.” 

“ But there is a hairy one among them,” said 
Ellie. 

“ Ah ! ” said the fairy, “ that will be a great man in 
his time, and chief of all the tribe.” 

And, when she turned over the next five hundred 
years, it was true. 

For this hairy chief had had hairy children, and 
they hairier children still; and every one wished to 
marry hairy husbands, and have hairy children too; 
for the climate was growing so damp that none but 


220 


The Water-habtes : 


the hairy ones could live: all the rest coughed and 
sneezed, and had sore throats, and went into consump- 
tions, before they could grow up to be men and 
women. 

Then the fairy turned over the next -five hundred 
years. And they were fewer still. 

“ Why, there is one on the ground picking up 
roots,” said Elbe, “ and he cannot . walk upright.” 

No more he could; for in the same way that the 
shape of their feet had altered, the shape of their 
backs had altered also. 

“ Why,” cried Tom, “ I declare they are all apes.” 

“ Something fearfully like it, poor foolish creatures,” 
said the fairy. “ They are grown so stupid now, that 
they can hardly think : for none of them have used 
their wits for many hundred years. They have almost 
forgotten, too, how to talk. For each stupid child for- 
got some of the words it heard from its stupid parents, 
and had not wits enough to make fresh words for itself. 
Beside, they are grown so fierce and suspicious and 
brutal that they keep out of each other’s way, and 
mope and sulk in the dark forests, never hearing each 
other’s voice, till they have forgotten almost what 
speech is like. I am afraid they will all be apes very 
soon, and all by doing only what they liked.” 

And in the next five hundred years they were all 


221 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 

dead and gone, by bad food and wild beasts and 
hunters ; all except one tremendous old fellow with 
jaws like a jack, who stood full seven feet high ; and 
M. Du Chaillu came up to him, and shot him, as 
he stood roaring and thumping his breast. And he 
remembered that his ancestors had once been men, and 
tried to say, “ Am I not a man and a brother ? ” but 
had forgotten how to use his tongue ; and then he 
had tried to call for a doctor, but he had forgotten 
the word for one. So all he said was, “ Ubboboo ! ” 
and died. 

And that was the end of the great and jolly nation 
of the Doasyoulikes. And, when Tom and Ellie came 
to the end of the book, they looked very sad and 
solemn ; and they had good reason so to do, for they 
really fancied that the men were apes, and never 
thought, in their simplicity, of asking whether the 
creatures had hippopotamus majors in their brains or 
not; in which case, as you have been told already, 
they could not possibly have been apes, though they 
were more apish than the apes of all aperies. 

“ But could you not have saved them from becoming 
apes ” said little Ellie, at last. 

“ At first, my dear ; if only they would have be- 
haved like men, and set to work to do what they 
did not like. But the longer they waited, and be- 


222 


The ffater-Babks : 


haved like the dumb beasts, who only do what they 
like, the stupider and cjumsier they grew ; till at last 
they were past all cure, for they had thrown their 
own wits away. It is such things as this that help 
to make me so ugly, that I know not when I shall 
grow fair.” 

“ And where are they all now ? ” asked Ellie. 

“ Exactly where they ought to be, my dear. 

“ Yes ! ” said the fairy, solemnly, half to herself, as 
she closed the wonderful book. “ Folks say now that 
I can make beasts into men, by circumstance, and se- 
lection, and competition, and so forth. Well, perhaps 
they are right ; and perhaps, again, they are wrong. 
That is one of the seven things which I am forbidden 
10 tell, till the coming of the Cocqcigrues ; and, at 
dll events, it is no concern of theirs. Whatever their 
mcestors were, men they are ; and I advise them to 
behave as such, and act accordingly. But let them 
recollect this, that there are two sides to every ques- 
tion, and a downhill as well as an uphill road ; and, 
if I can turn beasts into men, I can, by the same 
laws of circumstance, and selection, and competition, 
turn men into beasts. You were very near being 
turned into a beast once or twice, little Tom. In- 
deed, if you had not made up your mind to go on 
this journey, and see the world, like an Englishman, 


A Fairy Hale for a Land-Bahy. 223 

I am not sure but that you would have ended as an 
eft in a pond.” 

“ Oh, dear me ! ” said Tom ; “ sooner than that, and 
be all over slime, I’ll go this minute, if it is to the 
world’s end.” 


224 


^be If^ater-Bahies : 


CHAPTER VI r. 

^ And Nature, the old Nurse, took 
The child upon her knee, 

Saying, ‘ Here is a story-book 
Thy father hath written for thee. 

i 

‘ Come wander with me,’ she said, 

‘ Into regions yet untrod. 

And read what is still unread 
In the Manuscripts of God.’ 



And he wandered away and away 
With Nature, the dear old Nurse, 

Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe.” 

Longfelilow. 


said Tom, “ I am ready to 
be off, if it’s to the world’s end.” 

“ Ah ! ” said the fairy, “ that is 
a brave, good boy. -But you 
must go further than the world’s 
end, if you want to find Mr. 
Grimes; for he is at the Other-end-of-No where. You 


A Fairy F ale for a Land-Baby 229 

must go to Shiny Wall, and through the white gate 
that never was opened ; and then you will come to 
Peacepool, and Mother Carey’s Haven, where the 
good whales go when they die. And there Mother 
Carey will tell you the way to the Other-end-of- 
Nowhere, and there you will find Mr. Grimes.” 

“ Oh, dear ! ” said Tom. “ But I do not know my 
way to Shiny Wall, or where it is at all.” 

“ Little boys must take the trouble to find out 
things for themselves, or they will never grow to be 
men ; so that you must ask all the beasts in the sea 
and the birds in the air, and if you have been good 
to them, some of them will tell you the way to Shiny 
VV^all.” 

“ Well,” said Tom, “it will be a long journey, so 
I had better start at once. Good-bye, Miss El lie ; you 
know I am getting a big boy, and I must go out and 
see the world.” 

“ I know you must,” said Ellie ; “ but you will not 
forget me, Tom. I shall wait here till you come.” 

And she shook hands with him and bade him good- 
bye. Tom longed very much again to kiss her; but 
he thought it would not be respectful, considering she 
was a lady born ; . so he promised not to forget her : 
hut his little whirl-about of a head was so full of the 
notion of going out to see the world, that it forgot her 
*5 


226 


T^he JVater-Babies : 


in five minutes : however, though his head forgot her 
I am glad to say his heart did not. 

So he asked all the beasts in the sea, and all the birds 
in the air, but none of them knew the way to Shiny 
Wall. For why? He was still too far down south. 

Then he met a ship, far larger than he had ever 
seen — a gallant ocean-steamer, with a long cloud 
of smoke trailing behind; and he wondered how she 
went on without sails, and swam up to her to see. A 
shoal of dolphins were running races round and 
round her, going three feet for her one, and Tom 
asked them the way to Shiny Wall; but they did 
not know. Then he tried to find out how she moved, 
and at last he saw her screw, and was so delighted 
with it that he played under her quarter all day, till 
he nearly had his nose knocked off by the fans, and 
thought it time to move. ' Then he watched the 
sailors upon deck, and the ladies, with their bonnets 
and parasols: but none of them could see him, because 
their eyes were not opened — as, indeed, most people’s 
eyes are not. 

At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a 
very pretty lady, in deep, black widow’s weeds, and 
in her arms a baby. She leaned over the quarter- 
gallery, and looked back and back toward England 
far away ; and as she looked she sang : — 


A Fair) Hale for a Land-Bahy, 227 

I. 

“ Soft, soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding. 

Waft thy silver cloud-webs athwart the summer sea ; 

Thin, thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining, 

Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me. 

II. 

Deep, deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding. 

Pour 'I'hyself abroad, O Lord, on earth and air and sea ; 

Worn weary hearts within Thy holy temple hiding. 

Shield from sorrow, sin, and shame my helpless babe and me.” 

Her voice was so soft and low, and the music of 
the air so sweet, that Tom could have listened to it 
all day. But as she held the baby over the gallery- 
rail, to show it the dolphins leaping and the water 
gurgling in the ship's wake, lo ! and behold, the baby 
saw Tom. 

He was quite sure of that; for when their eyes 
met, the baby smiled and held out its hands; and 
Tom smiled and held out his hands too; and the baby 
kicked and leaped, as if it wanted to jump overboard 
to him. 

“What do you see, my darling?” said the lady; 
and her eyes followed the baby’s till she too caught 
sight of Tom, swimming about among the foam-beads 
Delow. 

She gave a little shriek and start; and then she 
said, quite quietly, “Babies in the sea? Well, per 


T!he fVater-Bahies : 


228 

haps it is the happiest place for them,” and wavea 
her hand to Tom, and cried, “Wait a little, darling, 
only a little : and perhaps we shall go with you and 
be at rest.” 

And at that an old nurse, all in black, came out 
and talked to her, and drew her in. And Tom turned 
away northward, sad and wondering; and watched 
the great steamer slide away into the dusk, and the 
lights on board peep out one by one, and die out 
again, and the long bar of smoke' fade away into the 
evening mist, till all was out of sight. 

And he swam northward again, day after day, till 
at last he met the King of the Herrings, with a 
currycomb growing out of his nose, and a sprat in 
his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to 
Shiny Wall; so he bolted his sprat head-foremost, 
and said, — ^ 

“ If I were you, young gentleman, I should go 
to the Allalonestone, and ask the last of the Gairfowl. 
She is of a very ancient clan, very nearly as ancient 
as my own ; and knows a good deal which these 
modern upstarts don’t, as ladies of old houses are 
likely to do.” 

Tom asked his way to her, and the King of the 
Herrings told him very kindly; for he was a cour- 
teous old gentleman of the old school, though he 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby, 229 

was horribly ugly, and strangely bedizened too, like 
the old dandies who lounge in the club-house win- 
dows. 

But just as Tom had thanked him and set off, he 
called after him : “ Hi ! I say, can you fly ? ” 

‘‘ I never tried,” says Tom. “ Why?” 

Because, if you can, I should advise you to say 
nothing to the old lady about it. There ; take a 
hint. Good-bye.” 

And away Tom went for seven days and seven 
nights due northwest, till he came to a great cod-bank, 
the like of which he never saw before. The great 
cod lay below in tens of thousands, and gobbled 
shell-flsh all day long; and the blue sharks roved 
above in hundreds, and gobbled them when they 
came up. So they ate, and ate, and ate each other, 
as they had done since the making of the world ; for 
no man had come here yet to catch them, and find 
out how rich old Mother Carey is. 

And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing 
up on the Allalonestone, all alone. And a very grand 
old lady she was, full three feet high, and bolt upright, 
like some old Highland chieftainess. She had on a 
black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, 
and a very high bridge to her nose (which is a sure 
mark of high breeding), and a large pair of white 


230 


The Water-Babies : 


spectacles on it, which made her look rather odd 
but it was the ancient fashion of her house. 

And instead of wings, she had two little feathery 
arms, with which she fanned herself, and complained 
of the dreadful heat; and she kept on crooning an 
old song to herself, which she learnt when she was 
a little baby-bird, long ago: — 

“Two little birds, they sat on a stone, 

One swam away, and then there was one ; 

With a fal-lal-la-lady. 

“ The other swam after, and then there was none, 

And so the poor stone was left all alone ; 

With a fal-lal-la-lady.” 

It was “flew” away, properly, and not “swam” 
away: but, as she could not fly, she had a right to 
alter it. However, it was a very fit song for her to 
sing, because she was a lady herself. 

Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his 
bow ; and the first thing she said was, — 

“Have you wings? Can you fly?” 

“Oh dear, no, ma’am; I should not think of such 
a thing,” said cujining little Tom. 

“Then I shall have great pleasure in talking tc 
you, my dear. It is quite refreshing nowadays to 
see anything without wings. They must all have 
wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, 


23 * 


A Fairy "F ale for a Land-Baby, 

and fly. What can they want with flying, and rais* 
ing themselves above their proper station in life*? 
In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought 
of having wings, and did very well without; and 
now they all laugh at me because I keep to the good 
old fashion. Why, the very marrocks and dovekies 
have got wings, the vulgar creatures, and poor little 
ones enough they are ; and my own cousins too, the 
razor-bills, who are gentlefolk born, and ought to 
know better than to ape their inferiors.” 

And so she was running on, while Tom tried to get 
in a word edgeways ; and at last he did, when the 
old lady got out of breath, and began fanning herself 
again ; and then he asked if she knew the way to 
Shiny Wall. 

“ Shiny Wall *? Who should know better than I *? 
We all came from Shiny Wall, thousands of years ago, 
when it was decently cold, and the climate was fit for 
gentlefolk; but now, what with the heat, and what with 
these vulgar- winged things who fly up and down and 
eat everything, so that gentlepeople’s hunting is all spoilt, 
and one really cannot get one’s living, or hardly venture 
off the rock for fear of being flown against by some 
creature that would not have dared to come within a 
mile of one a thousand years ago, — what was I saying*? 
Why, we have quite gone down in the world, my dear, 


"The iVater-Babies : 


232 

and have nothing left but our honor. And I am the 
last of my family. A friend of mine and I came and 
settled on this rock when we were young, to be out of 
the way of low people. Once we were a great nation, 
and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot 
us so, and knocked us on the head, and took our eggs, 
— why, if you will believe it, they say that on the 
coast of Labrador the sailors used to lay a plank from 
the rock on board the thing they called their ship, and 
drive us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled 
down into the ship’s waist in heaps; and then, I sup- 
pose, they ate us, the nasty fellows! Well — but — 
what was I saying 1 At last there were none of us 
left, except bn the old Gairfowlskerry, just off the Ice- 
land coast, up which no man could climb. Even there 
we had no peace; for one day, when I was quite a 
young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, and 
the sky grew dark, and all the air was filled with 
smoke and dust, and down tumbled the' old Gair- 
fowlskerry into the sea. The dovekies and marrocks, . 
of course, all flew away ; but we were too proud to 
do that. Some of us were dashed to pieces, and some 
drowned ; and those who were left got away to Eldey, 
and the dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and 
that another Gairfowlskerry has risen out of the sea 
close to the old one, but that it is such a poor flat 


A Fairy "Fale for a Land-Baby. 233 

place that it is not safe to live on : and so here I am 
left alone.” 

This was the Gairfowl’s story, and, strange as it may 
seem, it is every word of it true. 

“If you only had had wings!” said Tom; “then 
you might all have flown away too.” 

“Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not 
gentlemen and ladies, and forget that noblesse oblige^ 
they will find it as easy to get on in the world as 
other people who don’t care what they do. Why, 
if I had not recollected that noblesse oblige^ I should 
not have been all alone now.” And the poor old 
lady sighed. 

“ How was that, ma’am ? ” 

“ Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with me, 
and after we had been here some time, he wanted to 
marry, — in fact, he actually proposed to me. Well, I 
can’t blame him ; I was young, and very handsome 
then, I don’t deny ; but you see, I could not hear of 
such a thing, because he was my deceased' sister’s hus- 
band, you see ? ” 

“Of course not, ma’am,” said Tom; though, of 
course, he knew nothing about it. “ She was very 
much diseased, I suppose ” 

“ You do not understand me, my dear. I mean, 
rhat being a lady, and with right and honorable feel- 


234 


T^he fVater-Babies : 


mgs, as our house always has had, I felt it my duty 
to snub him, and howk him, and peck him continually, 
to keep him at his proper distance ; and, to tell the 
truth, I once pecked him a little too hard, poor fellow, 
and he tumbled backwards off the rock, and — really, 
it was very unfortunate, but it was not my fault — a 
shark coming -by saw him flapping, and snapped him 
up. And since then I have lived all alone — 

With a fal-lal-la-lady. 

And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody 
will miss me ; and then the poor stone will be left all 
alone.’’ 

“ But, please, which is the way to Shiny Wall ? ” 
said Tom. 

“Oh, you must go, my little dear — you must go. 
Let me see — I am sure — that is — really, my poor old 
brains are getting quite puzzled. Do you know, my 
little dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you must 
ask some of these vulgar birds about, for I have quite 
forgotten.” 

And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears 
of pure oil; and Tom was quite sorry for her; and 
for himself too, for he was at his wit’s end whom 
to ask. 

But by there came a flock of petrels, who are 
Mother Carey’s own chickens; and Tom thought 


A Fairy ^ale for a Land-Baby. 235 

tnem much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and so per 
haps they were; for Mother Carey had had a great 
deal of fresh experience between the time that she 
invented the Gairfowl and the time that she invented 
them. They flitted along like a flock of black swal- 
lows, and hopped and skipped from wave to wave, 
lifting up their little feet behind them so daintily, and 
whistling to each other so tenderly, that Tom fell in 
love with them at once, and called them to know the 
way to Shiny Wall. 

“ Shiny Wall ? Do you want Shiny Wall ? Then 
come with us, and we will show you. We are Mother 
Carey’s own chickens, and she sends us out over all the 
seas, to show the good birds the way home.” 

Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he 
had made his bow to the Gairfowl. But she would 
not return his bow : but held herself bolt upright, and 
wept tears of oil as she sang: 

“ And so the poor stone was left all alone ; 

With a fal-lal-la-lady.” 

But she was wrong there ; for the stone was not left 
all alone : and the next time that Tom goes by it, he 
will see a sight worth seeing. 

The old Gairfowl is gone already: but there are 
better things come in her place; and when Torn comes 
tie will see the fishing-smacks anchored there in hum 


'The JVaier-Bahies : 


236 

dreds, from Scotland, and from Ireland, and from the 
Orkneys, and the Shetlands, and from all the Northern 
ports, full of the children of the old Norse Vikings, 
the masters of the sea. And the men will be hauling 
in the great cod by thousands, till their hands are sore 
from the lines; and they will be making cod-liver oil 
and guano, and salting down the fish ; and there will 
be a man-of-war steamer there to protect them, and a 
lighthouse to show them the way ; and you and I, 
perhaps, shall go some day to the Allalonestone to the 
great summer sea-fair, and dredge strange creatures 
such as man never saw before ; and we shall hear the 
sailors boast that it is not the worst jewel in Queen 
Victoria’s crown, for there are eighty miles of codbank, 
and food for all the poor folk in the land. That is 
what Tom will see, and perhaps you and I shall see it 
too. And then we shall not be sorry because we can- 
not get a gairfowl to stuff, much less find gairfowl 
enough to drive them , into stone pens and slaughter 
them, as the old Norsemen did, or drive them on 
board along a plank till the ship was victualled with 
them, as the old English and French rovers used tc 
do, of whom dear old Hakluyt tells : but we shal 
remember what Mr. Tennyson says, how 

“The old order changeth, giving place to the ne^r, 

Ai^ God fulfils Himself in many ways.” 


237 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby^ 

And now Tom was all agog to start for Shiny Wall; 
but the petrels said no. They must go first to Alb 
fowlsness, and wait there for the great gathering of all 
the sea-birds, before they start for their summer breeding- 
places far away in the Northern isles; and there they 
would be sure to find some birds which were going 
to Shiny Wall : but where Allfowlsness was, he must 
promise never to tell, lest men should go there and 
shoot the birds, and stuff them, and put them into 
stupid museums, instead of leaving them to play and 
breed and work in Mother Carey’s water-garden, where 
they ought to be. 

So where Allfowlsness is nobody must know ; and 
all that is to be said about it is, that Tom waited 
there many days ; and as he waited, he saw a very 
curious sight. On the rabbit burrows on the shore 
there gathered hundreds. and hundreds of hoodiecrows, 
such as you see in Cambridgeshire. And they made 
such a noise, that Tom came on shore and went up 
to see what was the matter. 

And there he found them holding their great cau- 
cus, which they hold every year in the North ; and all 
their stump-orators were speechifying; and for a tribune, 
the speaker stood on an old sheep’s skull. 

And they cawed and cawed, and boasted of all the 
clever things they had done ; how many la^iibs’ eyes 


"The JVater-Bahies : 


238 

they had picked out, and how many dead bullocks the} 
had eaten, and how many young grouse they had swal- 
lowed whole, and how many grouse-eggs they had flown 
away with, stuck on the point of their bills, which is 
the hoodiecrow’s particularly clever feat, of which he 
is as proud as a gypsy is of doing the hokany-baro ; 
and what that is, I won’t tell you. 

And at last they brought out the prettiest, neatest 
young lady-crow that ever was seen, and set her in the 
middle, and all began abusing and vilifying, and rating, 
and bullyragging at- her, because she had stolen no 
grouse-eggs, and had actually dared to say that she 
would not steal any. So she was to be tried publicly 
by their laws (for the hoodies always try some offenders 
in their great yearly parliament). And there she stood 
in the middle, in her black gown arid gray hood, look- 
ing as meek and as neat as a. Quakeress, and they all 
bawled at her at once. 

And it was in vain that she pleaded 

That she did not like grouse-eggs ; 

That she could get her living very well without 
them ; 

That she was afraid to eat them, for fear of the 
gamekeepers ; 

That she had not the heart to eat them, because the 
grouse were such pretty, kind, jolly birds ; 


235 


A Fairy ^ale for a Land-Bahy. 

And a dozen reasons more. 

For all the other scaul-crows set upon her, and 
pecked her to death there and then, before Tom could 
come to help her; and then flew away, very proud of 
what they had done. 

Now, was not this a scandalous transaction ? 

But they arq true republicans, these hoodies, who do 
every one just what he likes, and make other people 
do so too ; so that, for any freedom of speech, thought, 
or action, which is allowed among them, they might as 
well be American citizens of the new school. 

But the fairies took the good crow, and gave her 
nine new sets of feathers running, and turned her at 
last into the most beautiful bird of paradise with a 
green velvet suit and a long tail, and sent her to eat 
fruit in the Spice Islands, where cloves and nutmegs 
grow. 

And Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid settled her account 
with the wicked hoodies. For, as they flew away, 
what should they find but a nasty dead dog ? — on 
which they all set to work, pecking and gobbling and 
cawing and quarrelling, to their hearts' content. But 
the moment afterwards, they all threw up their bills 
into the air, and gave one screech ; and then turned 
head-over-heels backward, and fell down dead, one 
hundred and twenty-three of them at once. For 


240 


The PPater-BaHes : 


why ? The fairy had told the gamekeeper in a 
dream to fill the dead dog full of strychnine ; and 
so he did. 

And after a while the birds began to gather at All- 
fowlsness, in thousands and tens of thousands, black- 
ening all the air ; swans and brant geese, harlequins 
and eiders, harelds and garganeys, smews and goos- 
anders, divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks 
and razorbills, gannets and petrels, skuas and terns, 
with gulls beyond all naming or numbering; and 
they paddled and washed and splashed and combed 
and brushed themselves on the sand, till the shore 
was white with feathers; and they quacked and 
clucked and gabbled and chattered and screamed 
and Avhooped as they talked over' matters with their 
friends, and settled where they were to go and breed 
that summer, till you might have heard them ten 
miles off; and lucky it was for them that there was 
no one to hear them but the old keeper, who lived 
all alone upon the Ness, in a turf hut thatched with 
heather and fringed round with great stones slung 
across the roof by bent-ropes, lest the winter gales 
should blow the hut right away. But he never 
minded the birds nor hurt them, because they were 
not in season: indeed, he minded but two things in 
the whole world, and those were, his Bible and his 


J Fairy Tale for a Land-Bahy. 241 

grouse; for he was as good an old Scotchman as 
ever knit stockings on a winter’s night: only, when all 
the birds were going, he toddled out, and took off 
his cap to them, and wished them a merry journey 
and a safe return ; and then gathered up all the feathers 
which they had left, and cleaned them to sell down 
south, and make feather-beds for stuffy people to 
lie on. 

Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether 
they would take Tom to Shiny Wall ; but one set 
was going to Sutherland, and one to the Shetlands, 
and one to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and 
one to Iceland, and one to Greenland : but none 
would go to Shiny Wall. So the good-natured pe- 
trels said that they would show him part of the way 
themselves, but they were only going as far as Jan 
Mayen’s land ; and after that he must shift for him 
self. 

And then all the birds rose up, and streamed away 
in long black lines, north, and northeast, and north- 
west, across the bright blue summer sky; and their 
cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds, and ten 
thousand peals of bells. Only the puffins stayed 
behind, and killed the young rabbits, and laid their 
eggs in the rabbit-burrows; which was rough prac- 
tice, certainly : but a man must see to his own family. 

16 


242 


l^he IVater-Babies : 


And, as Tom and the petrels went northeastward, 
it began to blow right hard; for the old gentleman 
in the gray great-coat, who looks after the big copper 
boiler in the gulf of Mexico, had got behind-hand 
with his work ; so Mother Carey had sent an electric 
message to him for more steam ; and now the steam 
was coming, as much in an hour as ought to have 
come in a week, puffing and roaring and swishing 
and swirling, till you could not see where the sky 
ended and the sea began. But Tom and the petrels 
never cared, for the gale was right abaft, and away 
they went over the crests of the billows, as merry 
as so many flying fish. 

, " And at last they saw an ugly sight — the black 
side of a great ship, water-logged in the trough of 
the sea. Her funnel and her masts were overboard, 
and swayed and surged under her lee; her decks 
were swept as clean as a barn-floor, and there was 
no living soul on board. 

The petrels flew up to her, and wailed round her; 
for they were very sorry indeed,, and also they ex- 
pected to find some salt pork; and Tom scrambled 
on board of her and looked round, frightened and 
sad. 

And there, in a little cot, lashed tight under the 
bulwark, lay a baby fast asleep ; the very same baby, 


A Fairy Hale for a Land-Baby\ 24 3 

Tom saw at once, which he had seen in the singing 
lady’s arms. 

He went up to it, and wanted to wake it: but 
behold, from under the cot out jumped a little black 
and tan terrier dog, and began barking and snapping 
at Tom, and would not let him touch the cot. 

Tom knew the dog’s teeth could not hurt him: 
but at least it could shove him away, and did; and 
he and the dog fought and struggled, for he wanted 
to help the baby, and did not want to throw the 
poor dog overboard : but, as they were struggling, 
there came a tall green sea, and walked in over the 
weather side of the ship, and swept them all into 
the waves. 

“Oh, the baby, the baby!” screamed Tom: but 
the next moment he did not scream at all ; for he 
saw the cot settling down through the green water, 
with the baby smiling in it, fast asleep; and he saw 
the fairies come up from below, and carry baby arid 
cradle gently down in their soft arms ; and then he 
knew it was all right, and that there would be a new 
water-baby in St. Brandan’s Isle. 

And the poor little dog^ 

Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, 
he sneezed so hard, that he sneezed himself clean 
out of his skin, and turned into a water-dog, and 


244 


^he iVater-Bahies : 


jumped and danced round Tom, and ran over the 
crests of the waves, and snapped at the jelly-fish and 
the mackerel, and followed Tom the whole way to 
the Other-end-of-Nowhere. 

Then they went on again, till they began to see 
the peak of Jan Mayen’s Land, standing up like a 
white sugar-loaf, two miles above the clouds. 

And there they fell in with a whole flock of molly- 
mocks, who were feeding on a dead whale. 

“ These are the fellows to show you the way,” said 
Mother Carey’s chickens ; “ we cannot help you fur- 
ther north. We don’t like to get among, the ice 
pack, for fear it should nip our toes; but the mollys 
dare fly anywhere.” 

So the petrels called to the mollys : but they were 
so busy and greedy, gobbling and pecking and splut- 
tering and fighting over the blubber, that they did 
not take the least notice. 

‘‘Come, come,” said the petrels, “you lazy greedy 
lubbers, this young gentleman is going to Mother 
Carey, and if you don’t attend on him, you won’t 
earn your discharge from her, you know.” 

“ Greedy we are,” says a great fat old molly, “ but 
lazy we a’n’t; and, as for lubbers, we’re no more 
lubbers than you. Let’s have a look at the lad.” 

And he flapped right into Tom’s face, and stared 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 245 

at him in the most impudent way (for the mollys 
are audacious fellows, as all whalers know), and then 
asked him where he hailed from, and what land he 
sighted last. 

And, when Tom told him, he seemed pleased, and 
said he was a good plucked one to have got so far. 

“Come along, lads,” he said to the rest, “and give 
this little chap a cast over the pack, for Mother 
Carey’s sake. We’ve eaten blubber enough for to- 
day, and we’ll e’en work out a bit of our time by 
helping the lad.” 

So the mollys took Tom up on their backs, and 
flew off with him, laughing and joking — and oh, 
how they did smell of train oil ! 

“Who are you, you jolly birds *?” asked Tom. 

“We are the spirits of the old Greenland skippers 
(as every sailor knows), who hunted here, right 
whales and horse-whales, full hundreds of years agone. 
But, because we were saucy and greedy, we were all 
turned into mollys, to eat whale’s blubber all our 
days. But lubbers we are none, and could sail a 
ship now against any man in the North Seas, though 
we don’t hold with this new-fangled steam. And it’s 
a shame of those black imps of petrels to call us so; 
but because they’re her grace’s pets, they think the) 
may say anything they like.” 


246 


'The hf^ater-Babies : 


“And who are you?’’ asked Tom of him, for he 
saw that he was the king of all the birds. 

“ My name is Hendrick Hudson, and a right good 
skipper was I ; and my name will last to the world’s 
end, in spite of all the wrong I did. For I discovered 
Hudson River, and I named Hudson’s Bay; and 
many have come in my wake that dared not have 
shown me the way. But I was a hard man in my 
time, that’s truth, and stole the poor Indians off the 
coast -of Maine, and sold them for slaves down in 
Virginia; and at last I was so cruel to. my sailors, 
here in these very seas, that they set me adrift in 
an open boat, and I never was heard of more. So 
now I’m the king of all the moHys, till I’ve worked 
out my time.” 

And now they came to the edge of the pack, and 
beyond it they could see Shiny Wall looming, through 
mist, and snow, and storm. But the pack rolled hor- 
ribly upon the swell, and the ice giants fought and 
roared, and leapt upon each other’s backs, and ground 
each other to powder, so that Tom Was afraid to 
venture among them, lest he should be ground to 
powder too. And he was the more afraid, when he 
saw lying among the ice pack .the wrecks of many 
a gallant ship; some with masts and yards all stand- 
ing, some with the seamen frozen fast on board 


247 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy. 

Alas, alas, for them ! They were all true English 
hearts; and they came to their end like good knights- 
errant, in searching for the white gate that never was 
opened yet. 

But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up, 
and flew with them safe over the pack and the roar- 
ing ice giants, and set them down at the foot of 
Shiny Wall. 

“And where is the gate?” asked Tom. 

“ There is no gate,” said the mollys. 

“No gate?” cried Tom aghast. 

“None; never a crack of one, and that’s the whole 
of the secret, as better fellows, lad, than you have 
found to their cost; and if there had been, they’d 
have killed by now every right whale that swims the 
sea.” 

“What am' I to do, then?” 

“ Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have 
pluck.” 

“I’ve not come so far to turn now,” said Tom; 
“ so here goes for a header.” 

“A lucky voyage to you, lad,” said the mollys; 
“ we knew you were one of the right sort. So, good- 
oye.” 

“Why don’t you come too?” asked Tom. 

But the mollys only wailed sadly, “We can’f 


248 "The Water-Babies : 

go yet, we can’t go yet,” and flew away over the 
pack. 

So Tom dived under the great white gate which 
never was opened yet, and went on in black darkness, 
at the bottom of the sea, for seven days and seven 
nights. And yet he was not a bit frightened. Why 
should he be? He was a brave English lad, whose 
business is to go out and see all the world. 

And at last he saw the light, and clear, clear water 
overhead ; and up he came a thousand fathoms, among 
clouds of sea-moths, which fluttered round his head. 
There were moths with pink heads and wings and 
opal bodies, that flapped about slowly; moths with 
brown wings that flapped abou^t quickly; yellow 
shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly of 
all ; and jellies of all the colors in the world, that 
neither hopped nor skipped, but only dawdled and 
yawned, and would not get out of his way. The 
dog snapped at them till his jaws were tired ; but 
Tom hardly minded them at all, he was so eager to 
get to the top of the water, and see the pool where 
the good whales go. 

And a very large pool it was, miles and miles 
across, though the air was so clear that the ice cliffs 
on the opposite side looked as if they were close at 
hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 249 

spires and battlements, and caves and bridges, and sto- 
ries and galleries, in which the ice- fairies live, and drive 
away the storms and clouds, that Mother Carey's pool 
may lie calm from year’s end to year’s end. And 
the sun acted policeman, and walked round outside 
every day, peeping just over the top of the ice wall, 
to see that all went right; and now and then he 
played conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fire- 
works, to amuse the ice-fairies. For he would make 
himself into four or five suns at once, or paint the 
sky with rings and crosses and crescents of white 
fire, and stick Fimself in the middle of them, and 
wink at the fairies; and I dare say they were very 
much amused, for anything ’s fun in the country. 

And there the good whales lay, the happy sleepy 
beasts, upon the still oily sea. They were all right 
whales, you must know, and finners, and razor-backs, 
and bottle-noses, and spotted sea-unicorns with long 
ivory horns. But the sperm whales 'are such raging, 
ramping, roaring, rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother 
Carey let them in, there would be no more peace in 
Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond 
by themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and 
sixty-three miles south-southeast of Mount Erebus, 
the great volcano in the ice ; and there they butt 
each other with their ugly noses, day and night from 


250 


"The fVater-Babies : 


year’s end to year’s end. And if they think that 
sport — why, so do their American cousins. 

But here there were only good quiet beasts, lying 
about like the black hulls of sloops, and blowing 
every now and then jets of white steam, or sculling 
round with their huge mouths open, for the sea-moths 
to swim down their throats. There were no threshers 
there to thresh their poor old backs, or sword-fish to 
stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip them up, or 
ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers 
to harpoon and lance them. They were quite safe 
and happy there ; and all they had to do was to wait 
quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sent for them 
to make them out of old beasts- into new. 

Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked 
the way to Mother Carey. 

“ There she sits in the middle,” said the whale. 

Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the 
middle of the pool, but one peaked iceberg ; and he 
said so. 

“ That’s Mother Carey,” said the whale, “ as you 
will find when you get to her. There she sits making 
old beasts into new all the year round.” 

“ How does she do that ” 

“ That’s her concern, not mine,” said the old whale ; 
and yawned so wide ^for he was very large) that 


J Fairy Hale for a Land-Baby. 251 

there swam into his mouth 943 sea-moths, 13,846 
jelly-fish no bigger than pins’ heads, a string of salpae 
nine yards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who 
gave each other a parting pinch all round, tucked 
their legs .under their stomachs, and determined to 
die decently, like Julius Csesar. 

“ I suppose,” said Tom, “she cuts up a great whale 
like you into a whole shoal of porpoises?” 

At which the old whale laughed so violently that 
he coughed up all the creatures; who swam away 
again very thankful at having escaped out of that 
terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourn no 
traveller returns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, 
wondering. 

And, when he came near it, it took the form of 
the grandest old lady he had ever seen — a white 
marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne. And 
from the foot of the throne there swam away, out 
and out into the sea, millions of new-born creatures, 
of more shapes and colors than man ever dreamed. 
And they were Mother Carey’s children, whom she 
makes out of the sea-water all day long. 

He expected, of course, — like some grown people 
who ought to know better, — to find her snipping, 
piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling, basting, filing, 
planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding 


252 


JVater-Bahies : 


measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men 
do when they go to work to make anything. 

But, instead of that, she sat quite still with her 
chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea with 
two great grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself 
Her hair was as white as the snow, for she was 
very, very old, — in fact, as old as anything which 
you are likely to come across, except the difference 
between right and wrong. 

And, when she saw Tom, she looked at him very 
kindly. 

“ What do you want, my little man ? It is long 
since I have seen a water-baby here.” 

Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to 
the Other-end-of-No where. 

“You ought to know yourself, for you have been 
there already.” 

“Have I, ma’am? I’m sure I forget all about 
it,” said Tom. 

“ Then look at me.” 

And, as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, he 
recollected the way perfectly. 

Now, was not that strange? 

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Tom “Then I won’t 
trouble your ladyship any more. I hear you are 
very busy ? ” 


J Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 253 

“ I am never more busy than I am now,” she 
said, without stirring a finger. 

“ I heard, ma’am, that you were always making 
new beasts out of old.” 

“ So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble 
myself to make things, my little dear. I sit here 
and make them make themselves.” 

‘‘You are a clever fairy, indeed,” thought Tom. 
And he was quite right. 

That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey’s, 
and a grand answer, which she has had occasion to 
make several times to impertinent people. 

There was once, for instance, a fairy who was so 
clever that she found out how to make butterflies. 
I don’t mean sham ones; no: but real live ones, 
which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do 
everything that they ought; and she was so proud 
of her skill that she went flying straight off to the 
North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how she 
could make butterflies. 

But Mother Carey laughed. 

“Know, silly child,” she said, “that any one can 
make things, if they will take time and trouble 
enough : but it is not every one who, like me, car 
make things make themselves.” 

But people do not yet believe that Mother Carejr 


Ths Water-Bahies : 


254 

is as clever as all that comes to; and they will not 
till they, too, go the journey to the Other-end-of- 
No where. 

“ And now, my pretty little man,” said Mothei 
Carey, “you are sure you know the way to the 
Other-end-of-No where ? ” 

Tom thought; and behold, he had forgotten it 
utterly. 

“That is because you took -your eyes off me.” 

Tom looked at her again, and recollected; and 
then looked away, and forgot in an instant. 

“ But what am I to do, ma’am For I can’t 
keep looking at you when I am somewhere else.” 

“You must do without me, as most people have 
to do, for nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths 
of their lives; and look at the dog instead; for he 
knows the way well enough, and will not forget it. 
Besides, you . may meet some very queer-tempered 
people there, who will not let you pass without 
this passport of mine, which' you must hang round 
your neck and take care of; and, of course, as the 
dog will always go behind you, you must go the 
whole way backward.” 

“Backward!” cried Tom. “Then I shall not 
be able to see my way.” 

“ On the contrary, if you look forward, you will 


255 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby, 

not see a step before you, and be certain to go 
wrong; but, if you look behind you, and watch 
carefully whatever you have passed, and especially 
keep your eye on the dbg, who goes by instinct, 
and therefore can’t go wrong, then you will know 
what is coming next as plainly as if you saw it in 
a looking-glass.” 

Tom was very much astonished : but he obeyed 
her, for he had learnt always to believe what the 
fairies told him. 

“ So it is, my dear child,” said Mother Carey ; 
“and I will tell you a story, which will show you 
that I am perfectly right, as it is my custom to be.” 

“Once on a time, there were two brothers. One 
was called Prometheus, because he always looked 
before him, and boasted that he was wise before- 
hand. The other was called Epimetheus, because 
he always looked behind him, and did not boast at 
all ; but said humbly, like the Irishman, that he 
had sooner prophesy after the event. 

“Well, Prometheus was a very clever fellow, of 
course, and invented all sorts of wonderful things. 
But, unfortunately, when they were set to work, to 
work was just what they would not do: wherefore 
very little has come of them, and very little is left 
of them ; and now nobody knows what they were. 


256 "The iVater-Babks : 

save a few archseological old gentlemen who scratch 
in queer corners, and find little there save Ptinum 
Furem, Blaptem Mortisagam, Acarum Horridurn, 
and Tineam Laciniarum. 

“ But Epimetheus was a very slow fellow, cer- 
tainly, and went among men for a clod, and a muff, 
and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, and 
a boodle, and so forth. And very little he did, for 
many years: but what he did, he never had to do 
over again. 

“And what happened at last? There came to 
the two brothers the most beautiful creature that 
ever was seen. Pandora by name; which means. 
All the gifts of the gods. But because she had a 
strange box in her hand, this fanciful, forecasting, 
suspicious, prudential, theoretical, deductive, prophe- 
sying Prometheus, who was always settling what 
was going to happen, would have nothing to do 
with pretty Pandora and her box. 

“But Epimetheus took her and it, as he took 
everything that came ; and married her for better 
for worse, as every man ought, whenever he has 
even the chance of a good wife. And they opened 
the box between them, of course, to see what was 
inside: for, else, of what possible use could it have 
been to them ? 


A Fairy ’Tale for a Land-Baby. 


^57 


“And out flew all the ills which flesh is heir to; 
all the children of the four great bogies, Self-will, 
Ignorance, Fear, and Dirt; — for instance: 

Measles, Famines, 

Monks, Quacks, 

Scarlatina, Unpaid bills, 

Idols, Tight stays, 

Whooping-coughs, Potatoes, 

Popes, Bad Wine, 

Wars, Despots, 

Peacemongers, Demagogues, 

And, worst 6f all. Naughty Boys and Girls: 

But one thing remained at the bottom of the box, 
and that was, Hope. 

“ So Epimetheus got a great deal of trouble, as 
most men do in this world : but he got the three 
best things in the world into the bargain — a good 
wife, and experience, and hope: while Prometheus 
had just as much trouble, and a great deal more 
(as you will hear), of his own making; with noth- 
ing beside, save fancies spun out of his own brain, 
as a spider spins her web out of her stomach. 

“And Prometheus kept on looking before him so 
far ahead, that he was running about with a box of 
lucifers (which were the only useful things he evet 
invented, and do as much harm as good), he trod on 


T^ke IVater-Bahies : 


2,-8 

his own nose, and tumbled down (as most deductive 
philosophers do), whereby he set the Thames on fire; 
and they have hardly put it out again yet. So he had 
to be chained to the top of a mountain, with a vulture 
by him to give him a peck whenever he stirred, lest 
he should turn the whole world upsidedown with 
liis prophecies and his theories. 

“ But stupid old Epimetheus went working and 
grubbing on, with the help of his wife Pandora, al- 
ways looking behind him to see what had happened, 
till he really learnt to know now and then what would 
-happen next; and understood so well which side his 
bread was buttered, and which way the cat jumped, 
that he began to make things ^which would work, and 
go on working, too: to till and drain the ground, and 
to make looms, and ships, and railroads, and steam-, 
ploughs, and electric telegraphs, and all the things 
which you see in the Great Exhibition ; and to foretell 
famine, and bad weather, and the price of stocks, and 
the end of President Lincoln’s policy; till at last he 
grew as rich as a Jew, and as fat as a farmer; and 
people thought twice before they meddled with him, 
but only once before they asked him to help them ; 
for, because he earned his money well, he could afford 
to spend it well likewise. 

And his children are the men of science, who get 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 255 

good lasting work done in the world : but the children 
of Prometheus are the fanatics, and the theorists, and 
the bigots, and the bores, and the noisy windy people, 
who go telling silly folk what will happen, instead of 
looking to see what has happened already.” 

Now, was not Mother Carey’s a wonderful story ^ 
And, I am happy to say, Tom belieyed it every word. 

For so it happened to Tom likewise. Fie was very 
sorely tried ; for though, by keeping the dog to heels 
(^or rather to toes, for he had to walk backward}, he 
could see pretty well which way the dog was hunting, 
yet it was much slower work to go backwards than 
to go forwards. But, what was more trying still, no 
sooner had he got out of Peacepool, than there came 
running to him all the conjurers, fortune-tellers, astrol- 
ogers, prophesiers, projectors, prestigiators, as many as 
were in those parts (and there are too many of them 
everywhere}, Old Mother Shipton on her broomstick, 
with Merlin, Thomas the Rhymer, Gerbertus, Raba- 
nus Maurus, Nostradamus, Zadkiel, Raphael Moore, 
Old Nixon, and a good many in black coats and 
white ties who might have known better, considering 
in what century they were born, all bawling and 
screaming at him, “ Look ahead, only look ahead ; 
and we will show you what man never saw before, 
and right away to the end of the world ! ” 


26 o 


ne IVater-Babies : 


But I am proud to say that, though Tom had not 
been at Cambridge, — for, if he had, he would have 
certainly been senior wrangler, — he was such a little 
dogged, hard, gnarly, foursquare brick of an English 
boy, that he never turned his head round once all the 
way from Peacepool to the Other-end-of-No where ; 
but kept his eye on the dog, and let him pick out 
the scent, hot or cold, straight or crooked, wet or 
dry, up hill or down dale; by which means he never 
made a single mistake, and saw all the wonderful and 
hitherto by-no-mortal-man-imagined things, which it 
is my duty to relate to you in the next chapter. 


A Fain ‘Fale for a Land-Buhy. 


261 


CHAPTER VIIL and LAST. 

“ Come to me, O ye children ! 

For I hear you at your play ; 

And the questions that perplexed me 
Have vanished quite away. 

“Ye open the Eastern windows, 

That look towards the sun, 

Where thoughts are singing swallows, 

And the brooks of morning run. 
***** 

“ For what* are all our contrivings 
And the wisdom of our books. 

When compared with your caresses 
And the gladness of your looks ? 

“Ye are better than all the ballads 
That ever were sung or said ; 

For ye are living poems. 

And all the rest are dead.” — Longfellow 



ERE begins the never-to-be-too- 
much-studied account of the 
nine-hundred -and -ninety-ninth 
part of the wonderful things 
which Tom saw, on his jour- 
ney to the Other-end-oi-No- 
where ; which all good little 



262 


^he IVater-BaUes : 


children are requested to read ; that, if ever they get 
to the Other-end-of-No where, as they may very prob- 
ably do, they may not burst out laughing, or try to 
run away, or do any other silly vulgar thing which 
may offend Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid. 

Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he came 
to the white lap of the great sea-mother, ten thousand 
fathoms deep ; where she makes world-pap all day 
long, for the steam-giants to knead, and the fire- 
giants to bake, till it has risen and hardened into 
mountain-loaves and island-cakes. 

And there Tom was very near being kneaded up 
in the world-pap, and turned into a fossil water-baby; 
which would have astonished th^e Geological Society 
of New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of years 
hence. 

For, as he walked along in the silence of the sea- 
twilight, on the soft white ocean-floor, he was aware 
of a hissing, and a roaring, and a thumping, and a 
pumping, as of all the steam-engines in the world at 
once. And, when he came near, the water grew boil- 
ing hot; not that that hurt him in the least: but it 
also grew as foul as gruel; and every moment he 
stumbled over dead shells, and fish, and shar.ks, and 
seals, and whales, which had been killed by the hoi 
water. 


A Fairy "Fate for a Land-Bahy, 263 

And at last he came to the great sea-serpent him- 
self, lying dead at the bottom ; and, as he was too 
thick to scramble over, Tom had to walk round him 
three quarters of a mile and more, which put him out 
of his path sadly ; and, when he had got round, he 
came to the place called Stop. And there he stopped, 
and just in time. 

For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the bot- 
tom of the sea, up which was rushing and roaring 
clear steam enough to work all the engines in the 
world at once ; so clear, indeed, that it was quite 
light at moments; and Tom could see almost up to 
the top of the water above, and down below into the 
pit for nobody knows how far. 

But, as soon as he bent his head over the edge, 
he got such a rap on the nose from pebbles, that he 
jumped back again; for the steam, as it rushed up, 
rasped away the sides of the hole, and hurled it up 
into the sea in a shower of mud and gravel and 
ashes ; and then it spread all around, and sank again, 
and covered in the dead fish so fast, that before Tom 
had stood there five minutes he was buried in silt up 
to his ankles, and began to be afraid that he should 
have been buried alive. 

And perhaps he would have been, but that while 
he was thinking, the whole piece of ground on which 


264 


"The JVater-Bahies : 


he stood was torn off and blown upwards, and away 
flew Tom a mile up through the sea, wondering what 
was coming next. 

At last he stopped — thump! and found himself 
tight in the legs of the most wonderful bogy which 
he had ever seen. 

It had I don’t know how many wings, as big as 
the sails of a windmill, and spread out in a ring like 
them ; and with them it hovered over the steam 
which rushed up, as a ball hovers over the top of 
a fountain. And for every wing above it had a leg 
below, with a claw like a comb at the tip, and a 
nostril at the root; and in the middle it had no 
stomach and one eye ; and as for its mouth, that 
was all on one side, as the madreporiform tubercle 
in a star-fish is. Well, it was a very strange beast; 
but no stranger than some dozens which you may see. 

“What do you want here,” it cried quite peevishly, 
“getting in my way?” and it tried to drop Tom : 
but he held on tight to its claws, thinking himself 
safer where he was. 

So Tom told him who he was, and what his 
errand was. And the thing winked its one eye, and 
sneered, — 

“ I am too old to be taken in in that way. You 
are come after gold, — I know you are.” 


A Fairy T^ale for a Land-Baby. 26 5 

“Gold! What is god?” And really Tom did 
not know; but the suspicious old bogy would not 
believe him. 

But after a while Tom began to understand a little. 
For, as the vapors came up out of the hole, the 
bogy smelt them with his nostrils, and combed them 
and sorted them with his combs; and then, when they 
steamed up through them against his wings, they were 
changed into showers and streams of metal. From 
one wing fell gold-dust, and from another silver, and 
from another copper, and from another tin, and from 
another lead, and so on, and sank into the soft mud, 
into veins and cracks, and hardened there. Where- 
by it comes to pass that the rocks are full of metal. 

But, all of a sudden, somebody shut off the steam 
below, and the hole was left empty in an instant; 
and then down rushed the water into the hole, in 
such a whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round 
as fast as a tee-totum. But that was all in his day’s 
work, like a fair fall with the hounds; so all he did 
was to say to Tom, — 

“Now is your time, youngster, to get down, if 
you are in earnest, which I don’t believe.” 

“You’ll soon see,” said Tom; and away he went, 
IS bold as Baron Munchausen, and shot down the 
rushing cataract like a salmon at Ballisodare, 


266 


"The J^ater-Bahies : 


And, when he got to the bottom, he swam till he 
was washed on shore safe upon the Other-end-of* 
Nowhere; and he found it, to his surprise, as most 
other people do, much more like This-End-of-Some- 
where than he had been in the habit of expecting. 

And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where 
all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down 
dale, like leaves in a winter wood; and there he 
saw people digging and grubbing among them, to 
make worse books out of bad ones, and thrashing 
chaff to save the dust of it; and a very good trade 
they drove thereby, especially among children. 

Then he went by the sea of slops, to the mountain 
of messes, and the territory of tuck, where the ground 
was very sticky, for it was a41 made of bad toffe-e 
(not Everton toffee, of course), and full of deep cracks 
and holes choked with wind-fallen fruit, and green 
gooseberries, and sloes, and crabs, and whinberries, 
and hips, and haws, and all the nasty things which 
little children will eat if they can get them. But 
the fairies hide them out of the way in that country 
as fast as they can; and very hard work they have, 
and of very little use it is. For as fast as they hide 
away the old trash, foolish and wicked people m.ake 
fresh trash full of lime and poisonous paints, and 
actually go and steal receipts out of old Madame 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land~Bahy. 26J 

Science's big book to invent poisons for little chil- 
dren, and sell them at wakes and fairs and tuck- 
shops. Very well. Let them go on. Dr. Letheby 
and Dr. Hassall cannot catch them, though they are 
setting traps for them all day long. But the Fairy 
with the birch-rod will catch them all in time, and 
make them begin at one corner of their shops, and 
eat their way out at the other; by which time they 
will have got such stomach-aches as wdll cure them 
of poisoning little children. 

Next he saw all the little people in the world, 
writing alP the little books in the world, about all 
the other little people in the world; probably because 
they had no great people to write about: and if the 
names of the books were not Squeeky, nor the Pump- 
lighter, nor the Narrow Narrow World, nor the Hills 
of the Chattermuch, nor the Children’s Twaddeday, 
why then they were something else. And all the 
rest of the little people in the world read the books, 
and thought themselves each as good as the Presi- 
dent; and perhaps they were right, for every one 
knows his own business best. But Tom thought he 
would sooner have a jolly good fairy-tale about Jack 
the Giant-killer, or Beauty and the Beast, which taught 
uim something that he didn’t know already. 

And next he came to the centre of Creation (the 


268 


The fVater-Babies : 


hub, they call it there), which lies in latitude ^2.2 a 
south, and longitude 108.56 east. 

And there he found all the wise people instructing 
mankind in the science of spirit-rapping, while their 
house was burning over their heads: and when Tom 
told them of the fire, they held an indignation meet- 
ing forthwith, and unanimously determined to hang 
Toms dog for coming into their country with gun- 
powder in his mouth. Tom couldn’t help saying 
that though they did fancy they had carried all the 
wit away with them out of Lincolnshire two hundred 
years ago, yet if they had had one such Lincolnshire 
nobleman among them as good old Lord Yarborough, 
he would have called for the fire-engines before he 
hanged other people’s dogs. 'But it was of no use, 
and the dog was hanged: and Tom couldn’t even 
have his carcase; for they, had abolished the have- 
his-carcase act in that country, for fear lest when 
rogues fell out, honest men should come by their 
own. And so they would have succeeded perfectly, 
as they always do, only that (as they also always 
do) they failed in one little particular, viz: that 
the dog would not die, being a water-dog, but bit 
their fingers so abominably that they were forced tc 
.et him go, and Torn likewise, as British subjects 
Whereon they recommenced rapping for the spirits of 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Bahy, 269 

their fathers ; and very much astonished the poor old 
spirits were when they came, and saw how, according 
to the laws of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, their descend- 
ants had weakened their constitution by hard living. 

Then came Tom to the island of Polupragmosyne, 
which some call Rogues’ Harbor (but they are wrong; 
for that is in the middle of Bramshill Bushes, and the 
county police have cleared it out long ago). There 
every one knows his neighbor’s business better than 
his own ; and a very noisy place it is, as might be 
expected, considering that all the inhabitants are ex- 
officio on the wrong side of the house in the “Par- 
liament of Man, and the Federation of the World”; 
and are always making wry mouths, and crying that 
the fairies’ grapes were sour. 

There Tom saw ploughs drawing horses, nails driv- 
ing hammers, birds’ nests taking boys, books making 
authors, bulls keeping china-shops, monkeys shaving 
cats, dead dogs drilling live lions, blind brigadiers 
shelved as principals of colleges,' play-actors not in the 
least shelved as popular preachers ; and, in short, every 
one set to do something which he had not learnt, 
because in what he had learnt, or pretended to learn, 
he had failed. 

There stands the Pantheon of the Great Unsuccess 
ful, from the builders of the Tower of Babel to those 


/ 


I’jO 


"The IVater-Bahies : 


of the Trafalgar Fountains; in which politicians lecture 
on the constitutions which ought to have marched, 
conspirators on the revolutions which ought to have 
succeeded, economists on the schemes which ought to 
have made every one’s fortune, projectors on the dis- 
coveries which ought to have set the Thames on fire; 
and (in due time) presidents on the union which ought 
to have reunited, and secretaries of state on the green- 
backs which ought to have done just as well as hard 
money. There cobblers lecture on orthopedy (whatso- 
ever that may be) because they cannot sell their shoes ; 
and poets on .^Esthetics (whatsoever that may be) 
because they cannot sell their poetry. There philoso- 
phers demonstrate that England would be the freest 
and richest country in the world, if she would only^ 
turn Papist again; penny-a-liners abuse the Times, 
because they have not wit enough to get on its staff; 
and young ladies walk about with lockets of Charles 
the First’s hair (or of somebody else’s, when the Jews’ 
genuine stock is used up), inscribed with the neat and 
appropriate legend — which indeed is popular through 
all that land, and which, I hope, you will learn to 
translate in due time and to perpeqd likewise, — 

“ Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa puellis.” 

When he got into the middle of the town, they all 
set on him at once, to show him his way; or rather 


271 


A Fairy T^ale for a Land^Bahy, 

to show him that he did not know his way ; for as 
for asking him what way he wanted to go, no one 
ever thought of that. 

But one pulled him hither, and another poked him 
thither, and a third cried — 

“You mustn’t go west, I tell you; it is destruction 
to go west.” 

“ But I am not going west, as you may see,” said 
Tom. 

And another, “ The east lies here, my dear ; I assure 
you this is the east.” 

“But I don’t want to go east,” said Tom. 

“Well, then, at all events, whichever way you are 
going, you are going wrong,” cried they all with one 
voice, — which was the only thing which they ever 
agreed about; and all pointed at once to all the thirty- 
and-two points of the compass, till Tom thought all 
the sign-posts in England had got together, and fallen 
fighting. 

And whether he would have ever escaped out of 
the town, it is hard to say, if the dog had not taken it 
into his head that they were going to pull his master 
in pieces, and tackled them so sharply about the gas- 
trocnemius muscle, that he gave them some business 
of their own to think of at last; and while they were 
rubbing their bitten calves, Tom and the dog got safe 
away. 




272 


Hhe IVater-Babies : 


On the borders of that island he found Gotham 
where the wise men live ; the same who dragged th<? 
pond because the moon had fallen into it, and planted 
a hedge round the cuckoo, to keep spring all the year. 
And he found them bricking up the town-gate, because 
it was so wide that little folks could not get through. 
And, when he asked why, they told him they were 
expanding their liturgy. So he went on ; for it was 
no business of his: only he could not help saying 
that in his country, if the kitten could not get in 
at the same hole as the cat, she might ^tay outside 
and mew. 

But he saw the end of such fellows, when he came 
to the island of the Golden Asses, where nothing but 
thistles grow. For there they were all turned into 
mokes with ears a yard long, for meddling with 
matters which they do not understand, as Lucius did 
in the story. And like him, mokes they must remain, 
till, by the laws of development, the thistles develop 
into roses. Till then, they must comfort themselves 
with the thought, that the longer their ears are, the 
thicker their hides; and so a good beating don’t hurt 
them. 

Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay, in' 
which are no less than thirty and odd kings, beside 
half a dozen republics, and perhaps more by nex( 
mail. 


A Fairy Hale for a Land-Bahy. 27^ 

And there he fell in with a deep, dark, deadly, 
and destructive war, waged by the princes and poten- 
tates of those parts, both spiritual and temporal, 
against what do you think ? . One thing I am sure of : 
that unless I told you, you would never know ; nor 
how they waged that war either; for all their strateg}^ 
and art military consisted in the safe and easy process 
of stopping their ears and screaming, “Oh, don’t tell 
us ! ” and then running away. 

So when Tom came into that land, he found them 
all, high and low, man, woman, and child, running for 
their lives day and night continually, and entreating 
not to be told they didn’t know what: only the land 
being an island, and they, having a dislike to the water 
(being a musty lot for the most part), ran round 
arrd round the shore forever, which (as the island was 
exactly the same circumference as the planet on which 
we have the honor of living) was hard work, especially 
to tho^e who had business to look after. But before 
them, as bandmaster and flugelman, ran a gentleman 
shearing a pig ; the melodious strains of which animal 
led them forever, if not to conquest, still to flight ; 
and kept up their spirits mightily with the thought 
that they would at least have the pig’s wool for their 
pains. 

And running after them, day and night, came such 

18 


274 


^he iVater-Bahies : 


a poor, lean, seedy, hard-worked old giant, as ought to 
have been cockered up, and had a good dinner given 
him, and a good wife found him, and been set to play 
with little chddren ; and then he would have been a 
very presentable old fellow after all ; for he had a heart, 
though it was considerably overgrown with brains; 

He was made up principally of fish-bones and parch- 
ment, put together with wire and Canada balsam ; and 
smelt strongly of spirits, though he never drank any- 
thing but water : but spirits he used somehow, there 
was no denying. He had a great pair of spectacles 
on his nose, and a butterfly-net in one hand, and a 
geological hammer in the other; and was hung all 
over with pockets, full of collecting boxes, bottles, 
microscopes, telescopes, barometers, ordnance maps, 
scalpels, forceps, photographic apparatus, and all other 
tackle for finding out everything about everything, 
and a little more too. And, most strange of all, he 
was running not forwards but backwards, as fast as 
he could. 

Away all the good folks ran from him, except Tom, 
who stood his ground and dodged between his legs; 
and the giant, when he had passed him, looked down, 
and cried, as if he was quite pleased and comforted, — 

“ What % who are you And you actually don’t 
run away,^like all the rest?” But he had to take 


Fairy Fale for a . Land~Bahy, 275 

his spectacles off, Tom remarked, in order to see him 
plainly. 

Tom told him who he was; and the giant pulled 
out a bottle and a cork instantly, to collect him with. 

But Tom was too sharp for that, and dodged be- 
tween his legs and in front of him ; and then the giant 
could not see him at all. 

“No, no, no!” said Tom, “I’ve not been round 
the world, and through the world, and up to Mother 
Carey’s haven, beside being caught in a net and called 
a Holothurian and a Cephalopod, to be bottled up by 
any old giant like you.” 

And when the giant understood what a great trav- 
eller Tom had been, he made a truce with him at 
once, and would have kept him there to this day to 
pick his brains, so delighted was he at finding any 
one to tell him what he did not know before. 

“Ah, you lucky little dog I”, said he at last, 
quite simply, — for he was the simplest, pleasantest, 
honestest, kindliest old Dominie Sampson of a 
giant that ever turned the world upsidedown with- 
out intending it, — “Ah, you lucky little dog! If 
I had only been where you have been, to see what 
you have seen ! ” 

“Well,” said Tom, “ if you want to do that, you 
tiad best put your head under water for a few hours, 


Tke fPaten Babies : 


276 

as I did, and turn into a water-baby, or some other 
baby, and then you might have a chance.” 

“Turn into a baby, eh ^ If I could do that, and. 
know what was happening to me for but one hour, I 
should know everything then, and be at .rest. But I 
can’t ; I can’t be a little child again ; and I suppose if 
I could, it would be no use, because then I should 
know nothing about what was happening to me. Ah, 
you lucky little dog ! ” said the poor old giant. 

“ But why do you run after all these poor people ? ” 
said Tom, who liked the giant very much. 

“ My dear, it’s they that have been running after 
me, father and son, for hundreds and hundreds of years, 
throwing stones at me till they have knocked off my 
spectacles fifty times, and calling me a malignant and 
a turbaned Turk, who beat a Venetian and traduced 
the state,: — goodness only knows what they mean, for 
I never read poetry, — and hunting me round and 
round — though catch me they can’t, for every time 
I go over the same ground, I go the faster, and grow 
the bigger. While all I want is to be friends with 
them, and to tell them something to their advantage, 
like Mr. Joseph Ady : only somehow they are sc 
strangely afraid of hearing it. But, I suppose I am 
not a man of the world, and have no tact.” 

“ But why don’t you turn round and tell them so ? ’ 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby. 277 

“ Because I can’t. You see, I am one of the sons 
of Epimetheus, and must go backwards, if I am to go 
at all.” 

But why don’t you stop, and let them come up to 
you ? ” 

“ Why, my dear, only think. If I did, all the but- 
terflies and cockyolybirds would fly past me, and then 
I could catch no more new species, and should grow 
rusty and mouldy, and die. And I don’t intend to 
do that, my dear; for I have a destiny before me, 
they say : though what it is I don’t know, and^ don’t 
care.” 

“ Don’t care ? ” said Tom. 

“No. Do the duty which lies nearest you, and. 
catch the first beetle you come across, is my motto ; 
and I have thriven by it for some hundred years. 
Now I must go on. Dear me, while I have been 
talking to you, at least nine new species have escaped 
me.” 

And on went the giant, behind before, like a bull 
in a china shop, till he ran into the steeple of the great 
idol temple (for they are all idolaters in those parts, of 
course, else they would never be afraid of giants), and 
knocked the upper half clean off, hurting himself hor- 
ribly about the small of the back. 

But little he cared; for as soon as the ruins of the 


T^he IVater-Bahies : 


278 

steeple were well between his legs, he poked and 
peered among the falling stones and shifted his spec- 
tacles, and pulled out his pocket-magnifier, and 
cried, — 

“An entirely new Oniscus, and three obscure Podu- 
rellse ! Beside a moth which M. le Roi des Papillons 
(though he, like all Frenchmen, is given to hasty in- 
ductions) says is confined to the limits of the Glacial 
Drift. This is most important ! ” 

And down he sat on the nave of the temple (not 
being a man of the world) to examine his Podurellse. 
Whereon (as was to be expected) the roof caved in 
bodily, smashing the idols, and sending the priests 
flying out of doors and windows, like rabbits out of 
a burrow when a ferret goes in. 

But he never heeded ; for out of the dust flew a bat, 
and the giant had him in a moment. 

“ Dear me ! This is even more important! Here 
is a cognate species to that which Macgilliwaukie 
Brown insists is confined to the Buddhist Temples of 
Little Thibet; and now when I look at it, it may be 
only a variety produced by difference of climate ! ” 

And having bagged his bat, up he ‘got, and on he 
went ; while all the people ran, being in none the bet- 
ter humor for. having their temple smashed for the 
sake of three obscure species of Podurella, and a 
Buddhist bat. 


279 


A Fairy Fale for a Land~Bahy, 

“Well,” thought Tom; “ this is a very pretty (quar- 
rel, with a good deal to be said on both sides. But 
it is no business of mine.” 

And no more it was ; because he was a water-baby, 
and had the original sow by the right ear ; which you 
will never have, unless you be a baby, whether of the 
water, the land, or the air, matters not, provided you 
can only keep on continually being a baby. 

So the giant ran round after the people, and the 
people ran round after the giant, and they are running 
unto this day for aught I know, or do not know ; 
and will run till either he, or they, or both, turn into 
little children. And then, as Shakspeare says (and 
therefore it must be true), — 

“ Jack shall have Gill 
Nought shall go ill 

The man shall have his mare again, and all go well.” 

Then Tom came to a very farpous island, which 
was called, in the days of the great traveller Captain 
Gulliver, the Isle of Laputa. But Mrs. Bedonebyas- 
youdid has named it over again, the Isle of Tomtod- 
dies, all heads and no bodies. 

And when Tom came near it, he heard such a 
grumbling and grunting and growling and wailing 
and weeping and whining that he thought people must 
be ringing little pigs, or cropping puppies’ ear^^, oi 


28 o 


^he JVater-Bahies : 


drowning kittens: but when he came nearer still, he 
began to hear words among the noise ; which was the 
Tomtoddies’ song, which they sing morning and even- 
ing, and all night too, to their great idol Exami- 
nation, — 

“ I can’t learn my lesson : the examiner *s coming ! ’* 

And that was the only song which they knew. 

And when Tom got on shore, the first thing he saw 
was a great pillar, on one side of which was inscribed, 
“Playthings not allowed here”; at which he was so 
shocked that he would not stay to see what was 
written on the other side. Then he looked round for 
the people of the island: but instead of men, women, 
and children, he found nothing but turnips and rad- 
ishes, beet and mangel-wurzel, without a single green 
leaf among them, and half of them burst and decayed, 
with toadstools growing out of them. Those which 
were left began crying to Tom, in half a dozen differ- 
ent languages at once, and all of them badly spoken, 
“ I can’t learn my lesson ; do come and help me ! ” 
And one cried, “ Can you show me how to extract this 
square-root % ” 

And another, “ Can you tell me the distance be- 
tween a Lyrse and ^ Camelopardalis % ” 

And another, “ What is the latitude and longitude 
of Snooksville, in Noman’s County, Oregon, U. S- ? ’ 


28 i 


J Fairy "Tale for a Land-Baby, 

And another, “ What was the name of Mutius 
Scasvola’s thirteenth cousin’s grandmother’s maid’s 
cat ? ” 

And another, “ How long would it take a school- 
inspector of average activity to tumble head ovei 
heels from London to York?” 

And another, Can you tell me the name of a place 
that nobody ever heard of, where nothing ever hap- 
pened, in a country which has not been discovered 
yet ? 

And another, ‘‘ Can you show me how to correct 
this hopelessly corrupt passage of Graidiocolosyrtus 
Tabenniticus, on the cause why crocodiles have no 
tongues ? ” 

And so on, and so on, and so on, till one would 
have thought they were all trying for tide-waiters’ 
places, or cornetcies in the heavy dragoons. 

“ And what good on earth will it do you if I did 
tell you ? ” quoth Tom. 

Well, they didn’t know that: all they knew was, 
the examiner was coming. 

Then Tom stumbled on the hugest and softest 
nimblecomequick turnip you ever saw filling a hole in 
a crop of swedes, and it cried to him, “Can you tell 
me anything at all about anything you like ?” 

“ About what ? ” says Tom. 


282 


"The iVater-Bahies : 


“ About anything you like ; for as fast as I learn 
things I forget them again. So my mamma says that 
my intellect is not adapted for methodic science, and 
says that I must go in for general information.” 

Tom told him that he did not know general infor- 
mation, nor any officers in the army ; only he had a 
friend once that went for a drummer: but he could 
tell him a great many strange things which he had 
seen in his travels. 

So he told him prettily enough, while the poor 
turnip listened very carefully; and the more he listened, 
the more he forgot, and the more water ran out of him. 

Tom thought he was crying.: but it was only his 
poor brains running away, from being worked so hard ; 
and as Tom talked, the unhappy turnip streamed down 
all over with juice, and split and shrank till nothing 
was left of him but rind and water; whereat Tom ran 
away in a fright, for he thought he might be taken 
up for killing the turnip. 

But, on the contrary, the turnip’s parents were 
highly delighted, and considered him a saint and a 
martyr, and put up a long inscription over his tomb 
about his wonderful talents, early development, and 
unparalleled precocity. Were they not a foolish 
couple*? But there was a still more foolish couple 
next to them, who were beating a wretched little 


J Fairy ^ale for a Lund-Baby. 283 

radish, no bigger than my thumb, for sullenness and 
obstinacy and wilful stupidity, and never knew that 
the reason why it couldn’t learn or hardly even speak 
was, that there was a great worm inside it eating out 
all its brains. But even they are no foolisher than 
some hundred score of papas and mammas, who fetch 
the rod when they oyght to fetch a new toy, and send 
to the dark cupboard instead of to the doctor. 

Tom was so puzzled and frightened with all he 
saw that he was longing to ask the meaning of it ; and 
at last he stumbled over a respectable old stick' lying 
half covered with earth. But a very stout and worthy 
stick it was, for it belonged to good Roger Ascham in 
old time, and had carved on its head King Edward 
the Sixth, with the Bible in his hand. 

‘‘You see,” said the stick, “there were as pretty 
little children once as you could wish to see, and might 
have been so still if they had been only left to grow 
up like human beings, and then handed over to me; 
but their foolish fathers and mothers, instead of letting 
them pick flowers, and make dirt-pies, and get birds- 
nests, and dance round the gooseberry bush, as little 
children should, kept them always at lessons, working, 
working, working, learning weekday lessons all week- 
days, and Sunday lessons all Sunday, and weekly exam- 
inations every Saturday, and monthly examinations 


'The PVater-Bahies : 


284 

every month, and yearly examinations every year 
everything seven times over, as if once was not enough, 
and enough as good as a feast — till their brains grew 
big, and their bodies grew small, and they were all 
changed into turnips, with little but water inside; and 
still their foolish parents actually pick the leaves off 
them as fast as they grow, lest they should have an) 
thing green about them.” 

“Ah!” said Tom, “if dear Mrs. Doasyouwould 
bedoneby knew of it she would send them a lot of 
tops, and balls, and marbles, and ninepins, and make 
them all as jolly as sand-boys.” 

“ It would be no use,” said the stick. “ They 
can’t play now, if they tried. Don’t you see how 
their legs have turned to roots and grown into the 
ground, by never taking any exercise, but sapping 
and moping always in the same place? But here 
comes the Examiner-of-all-Examiners. So you had 
better get away, I warn you, or he will examine you 
and your dog into the bargain, and set him to ex- 
amine all the other dogs, and you to examine all 
the other water-babies. There is no escaping out of 
his hands, for his nose is nine thousand miles long, 
and can go down chimneys and through keyholes, 
up-stairs, down-stairs, in my lady’s chamber, examining 
all little boys, and the little boys’ tutors likewise. 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 285 

But when he is thrashed, — so Mrs. Bedonebyasyou- 
did has promised me, — I shall have the thrashing 
of him ; and if I don’t lay it on with a will, it’s a 
pity.” 

Tom went off: but rather slowly and surlily; for 
he was somewhat minded to face this same Exami- 
ner-of-all-Examiners, who came striding among the 
poor turnips, binding heavy burdens and grievous 
to be borne, and laying them on little children’s 
shoulders, like the Scribes and Pharisees of old, and 
not touching the same with one of his fingers; for 
he had plenty of money, and a fine house to live 
in, and so forth ; which was more than the poor 
little turnips had. 

But when he got near, he looked so big and burly 
and dictatorial, and shouted so loud to Tom to come 
and be examined, that Tom ran for his life, and the 
dog too. And really it was time; for the poor 
turnips, in their hurry and fright, crammed themselves 
so fast to be ready for the Examiner, that they burst 
and popped by dozens all round him, till the place 
sounded like Aldershott on a field-day, and Tom 
thought he should be blown into the air, dog and 
all. 

As he went down to the shore, he passed the 
poor turnip’s new tomb. But Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid 


286 


'The JVater-Bahies : 


had taken away the epitaph about talents and pre- 
cocity and development, and put up one of her 
own instead, which Tom thought much more sen- 
sible : — 

“ Instruction sore long time I bore, 

And cramming was in vain ; 

Till Heaven did please my woes to ease. 

By water on the brain.” 

So Tom jumped into the sea, and swam on his 
way, singing: — 

“ Farewell, Tomtoddies all ; I thank my stars 
’ That nought I know save those three royal r’s : 

Reading and ’riting sure, with ’rithmetick. 

Will help a lad of sense through thin and thick.” 

Whereby you may see that' Tom was no poet; but 
no more was John Bunyan, though he was as wise 
a man as you will meet in a month of Sundays. 

And next he came to Oldwivesfabledom, where 
the folks were all heathens, and worshipped a howl- 
ing ape. 

And there he found a little boy sitting in the 
middle of the road, and crying bitterly. 

’“What are you crying for?” said Tom. 

“ Because I am not as frightened as I could wish 
to be.” 

“Not frightened? You are a queer little chap; 
but, if you want to be frightened, here goes — Boo ! ” 


A Fairy Hale for a Land-Bahy, 287 

“x\h,” said the little boy, “that is very kind of 
you ; but I don’t feel that it has made any impression.” 

Tom offered to upset him, punch him, stamp on 
him, fettle him over the head with a brick, or any* 
thing else whatsoever which would give him the 
slightest comfort. 

But he only thanked Tom very civilly, in fine 
long words which he had heard other folk use, and 
which, therefore, he thought were fit and proper to 
use himself; and cried on till his papa and mamma 
came, and sent off for the Pow-wow man immedi- 
ately. And a very good-natured gentleman and lady 
they were, though they were heathens; and talked 
quite pleasantly to Tom about his travels, till the 
Pow-wow man arrived, with his thunderbox under 
his arm. 

And a well-fed, ill-favored gentleman he was, as 
ever served her Majesty at Portland. ^Tom' was a 
little frightened at first; for he thought it was Grimes. 
But he soon saw his mistake: for Grimes always 
looked a man in the face; and this fellow never 
did. And when he spoke, it was fire and smoke; 
and when he sneezed, it was squibs and crackers; 
and when he cried (which he did whenever it paid 
him), it was boiling pitch; and some of it was sur^ 
to stick. 


288 


The IVater-Bahies : 


“ Here we are again ! ” cried he, like the clown in 
a pantomime. “So you can’t feel frightened, m)r 
little dear — eh? I’ll do that for you. I’ll make 
an impression on you! Yah! Boo! Whirroo ! 
Hullabaloo ! ” 

And he rattled, thumped, brandished his thunder* 
box, yelled, shouted, raved, roared, stamped, and 
danced corrobory like any black fellow; and then 
he touched a spring in the thunderbox, and out 
popped turnip-ghosts and magic lanterns and paste- 
board bogies and spring-heeled Jacks and sallabalas, 
with such a horrid din, clatter, clank, roll, rattle, and 
roar, that the little boy turned up the whites of his 
eyes, and fainted right away'. 

And at that his poor heathen papa and mamma 
were as much delighted as if they had found a gold 
mine; and fell down upon their knees before the 
Pow-wow man, and gave him a palanquin with a 
pole of solid silver and curtains of cloth of gold; 
and carried him about in it on their own backs; but 
as soon as they had taken him up, the pole stuck 
to their shoulders, and they could not set him down 
any more, but carried him on willy-nilly, as Sinbad 
carried the old man of the sea: which was a pitiable 
sight to see; for the father was a very brave officer, 
and wore two swords and a blue button; and the 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Bahy. 289 

mother was as pretty a lady as ever had pinched feet 
like a Chinese. But you see, they had chosen to do 
a foolish thing just once too often; so by the laws 
of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, they had to go on doing 
it whether they chose or not, till the coming of the 
Coqcigrues. 

Ah ! don’t you wish that some one would go and 
convert those poor heathens, and teach them not to 
frighten their little children into fits? 

“Now, then,” said the Pow-wow man to Tom, 
“wouldn’t you like to be frightened, my little dear? 
For I can see plainly that you are a very wicked, 
naughty, graceless, reprobate boy.” 

“You’re another,” quoth Tom, very sturdily. And 
when the man ran at him, and cried “Boo!” Tom 
ran at him in return, and cried “ Boo ! ” likewise, 
right in his face, and set the little dog upon him; 
and at his legs the dog went. 

At which, if you will believe it, the fellow turned 
tail, thunderbox and all, with a “ Woof! ” like an old 
sow on the common ; and ran for his life, screaming, 
“Help! thieves! murder! fire! He is going to kill 
me ! I am a ruined man ! He will murder me ; and 
break, burn, and destroy my precious and invaluable 
thunderbox ; and then you will have no more thunder- 
showers in the land. Help ! help ! help ! ” 

19 


290 


l^he fVater-Bahies : 


At which the papa and mamma, and all the people 
of Oldwivesfabledom, flew at Tom, shouting, “ Oh, 
the wicked, impudent, hard-hearted, graceless boy! 
Beat him, kick him, shoot him, drown him, hang him, 
burn him ! ” and so forth : but luckily they had noth- 
ing to shoot, hang, or burn him with, for the faiiies 
had hid all the killing-tackle out of the way a little 
while before; so they could only pelt him with stones; 
and some of the stones went clean through him, and 
came out the other side. But he did not mind that 
a bit ; for the holes closed up again as fast as they 
were made, because he was a water-baby. However, 
he was very glad when he was safe out of the country, 
for the noise there made him all but deaf 

Then he came to a very quiet place, called Leave- 
heavenalone. And there the sun was drawing water 
out of the sea to make steam-threads, and the wind 
was twisting them up to make cloud-patterns, till they 
had worked between them the loveliest wedding veil 
of Chantilly lace, and hung it up in their own Crystal 
Palace for any one to buy who could afford it; while 
the good old sea never grudged, for she knew they 
would pay her back honestly. So the sun span, and 
the wind wove, and all went well with the great steam- 
loom ; as is likely, considering — and considering — 
and considering — 


291 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Baby, 

And at last, after innumerable adventures, each more 
wonderful than the last, he saw before him a huge 
building, much bigger, and — what is most surprising 
— a little uglier than a certain new lunatic asylum, 
but not built quite of the same materials. None of it, 
at least, — or, indeed, for aught that I ever saw, any 
part of any other building whatsoever, — is cased with 
nine-inch brick inside and out, and filled up with rub- 
ble between the walls, in order that any gentleman 
who has been confined during her Majesty’s pleasure 
may be unconfined during his own pleasure, and take a 
walk in the neighboring park to improve his spirits, 
after an hour’s light and wholesome labor with his 
dinner-fork or one of the legs of his iron bedstead. 
No. The walls of this building were built on an 
entirely different principle, which need not be described, 
as it has not yet been discovered. 

Tom walked towards this great buildrng, wonder- 
ing what it was, and having a strange fancy that he 
might find Mr. Grimes inside it, till he saw running 
toward him, and shouting “ Stop ! ” three or four 
people, who, when they came nearer, were nothing 
else than policemen’s truncheons, running along with- 
out legs or arms. 

Tom was not astonished. He was long past that. 
Besides, he had seen the naviculse in the water move 


292 


lihe M^ater Babies : 


nobody knows how, a hundred times, without arms, oi 
legs, or anything to stand in their stead. Neither was 
he frightened ; for he had been doing no harm. 

So he stopped ; and, when the foremost truncheon 
came up and asked his business, he showed Mother 
Carey’s pass ; and the truncheon looked at it in the 
oddest fashion ; for he had one eye in the middle of 
his upper end, so that when he looked at anything, 
being quite stiff, he had to slope himself, and poke 
himself, till it was a wonder why he did not tumble 
over ; but, being quite full of the spirit of justice (as 
all policemen, and their truncheons, ought to be), he 
was always in a position of s^table equilibrium, which- 
ever way he put himself 

“All right — pass on,” said he at last. And then 
he added, “ I had better go with you, young man.” 
And Tom had no objection, for such company was 
both respectable and safe ; so the truncheon coiled its 
thong neatly round its handle, to prevent tripping 
itself up — for the thong had got loose in running — 
and marched on by Tom’s side. 

“ Why have you no policeman to carry you ” 
asked Tom, after a while. 

“Because we are not like those clumsy-made trun- 
cheons in the land-world, which cannot go without 
having a whole man to carry them about. We do oui 


A 

A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Fahy, 2^3 

own work for ourselves; and do it very well, though 
I say it who should not.” 

“ Then why have you a thong to your handle V ” 
asked Tom. 

“To hang ourselves up by, of course, when we are 
off duty.” 

Tom- had got his answer, and had no more to say, 
till they came up to the great iron door of the prison. 
And there the truncheon knocked twice, with its own 
head. 

A wicket in the door opened, and out looked a tre- 
mendous old brass blunderbuss charged up to the 
muzzle with slugs, who was the porter; and Tom 
started back a little at the sight of him. 

“ What case is this? ” he asked in a deep voice, out 
of his broad bell-mouth. 

“ If you please, sir, it is no case ; only a young 
gentleman from her ladyship, who wants ta see Grimes 
the master-sweep.” 

“Grimes?” said the blunderbuss. And he pulled 
in his muzzle, perhaps to look over his prison-lists. 

“Grimes is up chimney No. 345’” from the 

inside. “ So the young gentleman had better go on to 
the roof” 

Tom looked up at the enormous wall, which seemed 
at least ninety miles high, and wondered how he should 


294 


’The hVater-Babies : 


ever get up; but, when he hinted that to the trun- 
cheon, it settled the matter in a moment. For it 
whisked round, and gave him such a shove behind as 
sent him up to the roof in no time, with his little dog 
under his arm. 

And there he walked along the leads, till he met 
another truncheon, and told him his errand. 

“ Very good,” it said. “ Come along: but it will be 
of no use. He is the most unremorseful, hard-hearted, 
foul-mouthed fellow I have in charge; and thinks 
about nothing but beer and pipes, which are not 
allowed here, of course.” 

So they walked along over, the leads, and very sooty 
they were, and Tom thought the chimneys must want 
sweeping very much. But he was surprised to see 
that the soot did not stick to his feet, or dirty them 
in the least. Neither did the live coals, which were 
lying about in plenty, burn him; for, being a water- 
baby, his radical humors were of a moist and cold 
nature, as you may read at large in Lemnius, Cardan, 
Van Helmont, and other gentlemen, who knew as 
much as they could, and no man can know more. 

And at last they came to chimney No. 345. Out 
of the top of it, his head and shoulders just showing, 
stuck poor Mr. Grimes; so sooty, and bleared, and 
ugly, that Tom could hardly bear to look at him. 


A Fairy Fale for a Land-Bahy, 295 

And in his mouth was a pipe ; but it was not a-lighti 
though he was pulling at it with all his might. 

“ Attention, Mr. Grimes,” said the truncheon ; “ here 
is a gentleman come to see you.” 

But Mr. Grimes only said bad words; and kept 
grumbling, “ My pipe won’t draw. My pipe won’t 
draw.” 

“ Keep a civil tongue, and attend ! ” said the 
truncheon ; and popped up just like Punch, hitting 
Grimes such a crack over the head with itself, that 
his brains rattled inside like a dried walnut in its shell. 
He tried to get his hands out, and rub the place ; 
but he could not, for they were stuck fast in the 
chimney. 

Now he was forced to attend. 

“ Hey ! ” he said, “ why, it’s Tom ! I suppose you 
have come here to laugh at me, you spiteful little 
atomy ” 

Tom assured him he had not, but only wanted to 
help him. 

I don’t want anything except beer, and that I 
can’t get; and a light to this bothering pipe, and tliat 
I can’t get either.” 

“I’ll get you one,” said Tom; and he took up a 
live coal (there were plenty lying about) and put it to 
Grimes’s pipe ; but it went* out instantly. 


296 


^he IVater-Babies : 


“ It’s no use,” said the truncheon, leaning itself up 
against the chimney, and looking on. “ I tell you, it 
is no use. His heart is so cold that it freezes every- 
thing that comes near him. You will see that pres- 
ently, plain enough.” 

“ Oh, of course, it’s my fault. Everything ’s always 
my fault,” said Grimes. “ Now don’t go to hit me 
again (for the truncheon started upright, and looked 
very wicked) ; you know, if my arms were only free, 
you daren’t hit me then.” 

The truncheon leant back against the chimney, and 
took no notice of the personal insult, like a well- 
trained policeman as it was, though he was ready 
enough to avenge any transgression against morality 
or order. 

“ But can’t I help you in any , other way ? Can’t 
I help you to get out of this chimney ? ” said Tom. 

“ No,” interposed the truncheon; “ he has come to 
the place where everybody must help themselves; and 
he will find it out, I hope, before he is done with 
me.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Grimes, “of course it’s me. Did 
I ask to be brought here into the prison ? Did I ask 
to be set to sweep your foul chimneys ^ Did I ask 
to have lighted straw put under me to make me go 
up ? Did I ask to stick fast in the very first chimney 


J Fatry Fale for a Land-Bahy, 297 

of’ all, because it was so shamefully clogged up with 
soot? Did I ask to stay here — I don’t know how 
long — a hundred years, I do believe, and never get 
my pipe, nor my beer, nor nothing fit for a beast, 
let alone a man.” 

“No,” answered a solemn voice behind. “No 
more did Tom, when you behaved to him in the very 
same way.” 

It was Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. And, when the 
truncheon saw her, it started bolt upright — Attention! 
— and made such a low bow, that if it had not been 
full of the spirit of justice, it must have tumbled on 
its end, and probably hurt its one eye. And Tom 
made his bow too. 

“Oh, ma’am,” he said, “don’t think about me; 
that’s all past and gone, and good times and bad times 
and all times pass over. But may not I help poor 
Mr. Grimes? Mayn’t I try and get some of these 
bricks away, that he may move his arms ? ” 

“ Y ou may try, of course,” she said. 

So Tom pulled and tugged at the bricks; but he 
could not move one. And then he tried to wipe Mr. 
Grimes’s face ; but the soot would not come off. 

“ Oh, dear ! ” he said, “ I have come all this way, 
through all these terrible places, to help you, and now 
I am of no use after all.” 


298 


lihe JVater-Bahies : 


“You had best leave me alone,” said Grimes; “you 
are a goodmatured, forgiving little chap, and that’s 
truth ; but you’d best be off. The hail ’s coming or. 
soon, and it will beat the eyes out of your little head.” 

“ What hail ? ” 

“ Why hail that falls every evening here; and, till 
it comes close to me, it’s like so much warm rain ; but 
then it turns to hail over my head, and knocks me 
about like small shot.” 

“ That hail will never come any more,” said the 
strange lady. “ I have told you before what it was. 
It was your mother’s tears, those which she shed when 
she prayed for you by her bedside; but your cold 
heart froze it into hail. But she has gone to heaven 
now, and will weep no more for her graceless son.” 

Then Grimes was silent a while; and then he 
looked very sad. 

“ So my old mother ’s gone, and I never there to 
speak to her ! Ah ! a good woman she was, and 
might have been a happy one, in her little school there 
in Vendale, if it hadn’t been for me and my bad 
ways.” 

“Did she keep the school in Vendale?” asked 
Tom. And then he told Grimes all the story of his 
going to her house, and how she could not abide the 
sight of a chimney-sweep, and then how kind she was, 
and how he turned into a water-baby. 


A Fairy "Fale for a Land-Baby. 

“ Ah ! ” said Grimes, “ good reason she had to hate 
the sight of a chimney-sweep. I ran away from her 
and took up with the sweeps, and never let her know 
where I was, nor sent her a penny to help her, and 
now it’s too late — too late ! ” said Mr. Grimes. 

And he began crying and blubbering like a great 
baby, till his pipe dropped out of his mouth, and 
broke all to bits. 

“Oh dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale 
again, to see the clear beck, and the apple-orchard, and 
the yew-hedge, how different I would go on ! But 
it’s too late now. So you go along, you kind little 
chap, and don’t stand to look at a man crying, that’s 
old enough to be your father, and never feared the 
face of man, nor of worse neither. But I’m beat now, 
and beat I must be. I’ve made my bed, and I must 
lie on it. Foul I would be, and foul I am, as an 
Irishwoman said to me once; and little I heeded it. 
It’s all my own fault ; but it’s too late.” And he cried 
so bitterly that Tom began crying too. 

“ Never too late,” said the fairy, in such a strange, 
soft, new voice that Tom looked up at her; and she 
was so beautiful for the moment, that Tom half fancied 
she was her sister. 

No more was it too late. For, as poor Grimes 
cried and blubbered on, his own tears did what his 


IVater-Bahies : 


3C0 

mother’s could not do, and Tom’s could not do, and 
nobody’s on earth could do for him ; for they washed 
the soot off his face and off his clothes; and then 
they washed the mortar away from between the bricks; 
and the chimney crumbled down; and Grimes began 
to get out of it. 

Up jumped the truncheon, and was going to hit 
him on the crown a tremendous thump, and drive 
him down again like a cork into a bottle. But the 
strange lady put it aside. 

“ Will you obey me if I give you a chance? ” 

“As you please, ma’am. You’re stronger than me, 
that I know too well, and wiser than me, I know 
too well also. And, as for being my own master, 
Tve fared ill enough with that as yet. So whatever 
your ladyship pleases to order me; for Pm beat, and 
that’s the truth.” 

“Be it so then — you may come out. But re- 
member, disobey me again, and into a worse place 
still you go.” 

“ I beg pardon, ma’am, but I never disobeyed 
you that I know of. I never had the honor of 
setting eyes upon you till I came to these ugly 
quarters.” 

“Never saw me? Who said to you. Those that 
will be foul, foul they will be ? ” 


A Fairy "Tale for a Land-Bahy, 301 

Grimes looked up; and Tom looked up too; for 
the voice was that of the Irishwoman who met them 
the day that they went out together to Harthover. 
“ I gave you your warning then : but you gave it 
yourself a thousand times before and since. Every 
bad word that you said, — every cruel and mean thing 
that you did, — every time that you got tipsy, — 
every day that you went dirty, — you were disobey- 
ing me, whether you knew it or not.” 

“If Fd only known, ma’am — ” 

“You knew well enough that you were disobey- 
ing something, though you did not know it was me. 
But come out and take your chance. Perhaps it 
may be your last.” 

So Grimes stept out of the chimney, and, really, 
if it had not been for the scars on his face, he looked 
as clean and respectable as a master-sweep need look. 

“Take him away,” said she to the truncheon, “and 
give him his ticket-of-leave.” 

“And what is he to do, ma’am?” 

“Get him to sweep out the crater of ^Etna; he 
will find some very steady men working out their 
time there, who will teach him his business; but 
mind, if that crater gets choked again, and there is 
an earthquake in consequence, bring them all to me, 
and I shall investigate the case very severely.” 


302 


"The IVater-Bahies : 


So the truncheon marched off Mr. Grimes, look 
ing as meek as a drowned worm. 

And for aught I know, or do not know, he is 
sweeping the crater of .^tna to this very day. 

“And now,” said the fairy to Tom, “your work 
here is done. You may as well go back again.” 

“I should be glad enough to go,” said Tom, “but 
how am I to get up that great hole again, now the 
steam has stopped blowing *?” 

“I will take you up the backstairs; but I must 
bandage your eyes first; for I never allow anybody 
to see those backstairs of mine.” 

“ I am sure I shall not tell anybody about them, 
ma’am, if you bid me not.” 

“Aha! So you think, my little man. But you 
would soon forget your promise if you got back 
into the land-world. For, if people only once found 
out that you had been up my backstairs, you would 
have all the fine ladies kneeling to you, and the rich 
men emptying their purses before you, and statesmen 
offering you place and power; and young and old, 
rich and poor, crying to you, ‘Only tell us the great 
backstairs secret, and we will be your slaves; we will 
make you lord, king, emperor, bishop, archbishop, 
pope, if you like — only tell us the secret of the 
backstairs. For thousands of years we have been 


3^3 


A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 

paying, and petting, and obeying, and worshipping 
quacks who told us they had the key of the back- 
stairs, and could smuggle us up them; and in spite 
of all our disappointments, we will honor, and glorify, 
and adore, and beautify, and translate, and apotheo- 
tize you likewise, on the chance of your knowing 
something about the backstairs, that we may all go 
on a pilgrimage to it; and, even if we cannot get 
up it, lie at the foot of it and cry: — 

‘ Oh backstairs, 

precious backstairs, aristocratic backstairs, 

invaluable backstairs, respectable backstairs, 

requisite backstairs, gentlemanlike backstairs, 

necessary backstairs, ladylike backstairs, 

good-natured backstairs, commercial backstairs, 

cosmopolitan backstairs, economical backstairs, 

comprehensive backstairs, practical backstairs, 

accommodating backstairs, logical backstairs, 

well-bred backstairs, deductive backstairs, 

comfortable backstairs, orthodox backstairs, 

humane backstairs, probable backstairs, 

reasonable backstairs,. credible backstairs, 

long-sought backstairs, demonstrable backstairs, 

coveted' backstairs, irrefragable backstairs, 

potent backstairs, 
all-but-omnipotent backstairs, 

&c. 


^ke Water-Babies : 


304 

Save us from the consequences of our own actions, 
and from the cruel fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ! ’ 
Do not you think that you would be a little tempted 
then to tell what you know, laddie?” 

Tom thought so certainly. “But why do they 
want so to know about the backstairs?” asked he, 
being a little frightened at the long words, and not 
understanding them the least; as, indeed, he was not 
meant to do, or you either. 

“ That I shall not tell you. I never put things 
into little folks’ heads which are but too likely to 
come there of themselves. So come; — now I must 
bandage your eyes.” So she tied the bandage on 
his eyes with one hand, and with the other she took 
it off. 

“Now,” she said, “you are safe up the stairs.” 
Tom opened his eyes very wide, and his mouth too; 
for he had not, as he thought, moved a single step. 
But, when he looked round him, there could be no 
doubt that he was safe up the backstairs, whatsoever 
they may be, which no man is going to tell you, for 
the plain reason that no man knows. 

The first thing which Tom saw was the black 
cedars, high and sharp against the rosy dawn; and 
St Brandan’s Isle reflected double in the still broad 
silver sea. The wind sang softly in the cedars, and 


A ¥a:ry ^ale for a Land-Baby, 305 

the water sang among the caves; the sea-birds sang 
as they streamed out into the ocean, and the land- 
birds as they built among the boughs; and the air 
was so full of song that it stirred St. Brandan and 
his hermits, as they slumbered in the shade ; and they 
moved their good old lips, and sang their morning 
hymn amid their dreams. But among all the songs 
one came across the water more sweet and clear than 
all; for it was the song of a young girl’s voice. 

And what was the song which she sang? Ah, my 
little man, I am too old to sing that song, and you 
too young to understand it. But have patience, and 
keep your eye single, and your hands clean, and you 
will learn some day to sing it yourself, without need- 
ing any man to teach you. 

And as Tom neared the island, there sat upon a 
rock the most graceful creature that ever was seen, 
looking down, with her chin upon^ her hand, and 
paddling with her feet in the water. And when they 
came to her she looked up, and behold jt was Elbe. 
“Oh, Miss Ellie,” said he, “how you are grown! ” 

“ Oh, Tom,” said she, “how you are grown, too ! ” 
And no wonder; they were both quite grown up: 
he into a tall man, and she into a beautiful woman. 

“ Perhaps I may be grown,” she said. “ I have had 
time enough ; for I have been sitting here waiting for 

20 


The PFater-Babies : 


306 

you many a hundred years, till I thought you were 
never coming.” 

“Many a hundred years?” thought Tom; but he 
had seen so much in his travels that he had quite given 
up being astonished ; and, indeed, he could think of 
nothing but Ellie. So he stood and looked at Elbe, 
and Ellie looked at him ; and they liked the employ- 
ment so much that they stood and looked for seven 
years more, and neither spoke nor stirred. 

At last they heard the fairy say: “Attention, chil- 
dren ! Are you never going to look at me again?” 

“We have been looking at you all this while,” they 
said. And so they thought they had been. 

“ Then look at me once more,” said she. 

They looked — and both of them cried out at once, 
“ Oh, who are you, after all ? ” 

“You are our dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby.” 

“No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ; but 
you are grown quite beautiful now ! ” 

“To you,” said the fairy. “ But look again.” 

“You are Mother Carey,” said Tom, in a very low, 
solemn voice ; for he had found out something which 
made him very happy, and yet frightened him more 
than all that he had ever seen. 

“ But you are grown quite young again.” 

“To you,” said the fairy. “ Look again.” 


J Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 307 

“You are the Irishwoman who met me the day I 
went to Harthover ! ” 

And when they looked, she was neither of them, 
and yet all of them at once. 

“ My name is written in my eyes, if you have eyes 
to see it there.” 

And they looked into her great, deep, soft eyes, and 
they changed again and again into every hue, as the 
light changes in a diamond. 

“Now read my name,” said she, at last. 

And her eyes flashed, for one moment, clear, white, 
blazing light; but the children could not read her 
name; for they were dazzled, and hid their faces in 
their hands. 

“Not yet, young things, not yet,” said she, smiling; 
and then she turned to Ellie.. 

“You may take him home with you now on Sun- 
days, Ellie. He has won his spurs in the great battle, 
and become fit to go with you, and be a man; because 
he has done the thing he did not like.” 

So Tom went home with Ellie on Sundays, and 
sometimes on week-days, too; and he is now a great 
man of science, and can plan railroads, and steam- 
engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and 
so forth ; and knows everything about everything, 
except why a hen’s egg don’t turn into a crocodile, 


The Water-Bahies : 


308 

and two or three other little things which no one will 
know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. And all 
this from what he learnt when he was a water-baby, 
underneath the sea. 

“And of course Tom married Elbe?” 

My dear child, what a silly notion ! Don’t you 
know that no one ever marries in a fairy-tale, under 
the rank of a prince or a princess? 

“ And Tom’s dog ? ” 

Oh, you may see him any clear night in July; for 
the old dog-star was so worn out by the last three hot 
summers, that there have been no dog-days since ; so 
that they had to take him down and put Tom’s dog 
up in his place. Therefore, as new brooms sweep 
clean, we may hope for some warm weather this year. 
And that is the end of my story. 

MORAL. 

And now, my dear little man, what should we learn 
from this parable ? 

We should learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine things, I 
am not exactly sure which. But one thing, at least, we 
may learn, and that is this : — when we see efts in the 
ponds, never to throw stones at them, or catch them 
with crooked pins, or put them into vivariums with 
sticklebacks, that the sticklebacks may prick them in 


j 1 Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 


309 

their poor little stomachs, and make them jump out of 
the glass into somebody’s workbox, and so come to a 
bad end. For these efts are nothing else but the 
water-babies who are stupid and dirty, and will not 
learn their lessons and keep themselves clean; and, 
therefore (as comparative anatomists will tell you fifty 
years hence, though they are not learned enough to 
tell you now), their skulls grow flat, their jaws grow 
out, and their brains grow small, and their tails grow 
long, and they lose all their rib^ (which I am sure you 
would not like to do), and their skins grow dirty and 
spotted, and they never get into the clear rivers, much 
less into the great wide sea, but hang about in dirty 
ponds, and live in the mud, and eat worms, as they 
deserve to do. 

But that is no reason why you should ill-use them : 
but only why you should pity them, and be kind to 
them, and hope that some day they will wake up, 
and be ashamed of their nasty, dirty, lazy, stupid life, 
and try to amend, and become something better once 
more. For, perhaps, if they do so, then after 379,423 
years, nine months, thirteen days, two hours, and 
twenty-one minutes (for aught that appears to the con- 
trary), if they work very hard and wash very hard all 
that time, their brains may grow bigger, and their 
jaws grow smaller, and their ribs come back, and 


T^he iVater-Babies. 


3*0 

their tails wither off, and they will turn into water- 
babies again, and, perhaps, after that into land-babies; 
and after that, perhaps, into grown men. 

You know they won’t? Very well, I dare say 
you know best. But, you see, some folks have a 
great liking for those poor little efts. They never 
did anybody any harm, or could if they tried; and 
their only fault is, that they do no good — any more 
than some thousands of their betters. But what with 
ducks, and what with pike, and what with stickle- 
backs, and what with water-beetles, and what with 
naughty boys, they are “sae sair haddened doun,” as 
the Scotsmen say, that it is a wonder how they live; 
and some folks can’t help hoping, with good Bishop 
Butler, that they .may have another chance, to make 
things fair and even, somewhere, somewhen, some- 
how. 

Meanwhile, do you learn your lessons, and thank 
God that you have plenty of cold wate^* to wash in: 
and wash in it too, like a true English man. And 
then, if my story is not true, something better is; 
and if I am not quite right, still you will be, as long 
as you stick to hard work and cold water. 

But remember always, as I told you at first, that 
this is all a fairy-tale, and only fun and pretence; 
and, therefore, you are not to believe a word of it, 
^ven if it is true. 


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